Lindsey ficlet

Title: Marked
Fandom: AtS
Characters: Lindsey
Dedication: Gamma Sue


When Lindsey was just born, his grandmother wet her thumb in water and drew signs over his pink face and his bare tummy that dried off his skin fast in the hot Oklahoma weather. Her daughter, his mother, told her to stop being superstitious, but that didn't stop the old woman from doing her best to protect the child, from whispering incantations over his head.

May your life be strong, precious one, she said, may you reach high, and may your end be quiet and peaceful.

"What are you saying there?" Lindsey's mother asked, suspicious.

May you know good from bad, my child, the old lady continued, unheeding, and may you choose the right path.

When Lindsey was but a baby, his grandmother died in a twister, although her body was never recovered. When he was twelve and wanted his own space, he moved to what was her old room; it still smelled of lavender and grapeseed oil, still had the same old, white curtains. The boy returned to his own bedroom after the very first night. He told his mother he just changed his mind, but it was the nightmares that drove him out. He never told anyone about waking in a sweat, after a dream in which he felt like lines of fire licked at his face and abdomen.

[end]

Caspian ficlet

Title: Appetite
Summary: Taste, for highlander100; Warning for Caspian.


Caspian will never forget the taste of hunger, of starvation. He'll forever compensate in feasting, in swallowing life into him, crunching it between his teeth. He revels in the suspended kill. It has to still be alive, and if not, at least still warm, still pulsing. He devours all those creatures, letting them fill his endless need, the incessant void within.

The taste of life; blood, brains, a still beating heart. The frantic fluttering of tiny legs in your mouth, the desperate clawing of paws, tentacles. The life, as it turns to death, and from there to nutrition, to life.

[100, Q to Caspian]

Kronos ficlet

Title: Old Flame
Summary: Taste, for highlander100; Kronos


Once we rode out of the sun, bringing death and destruction. Once we were brothers, united and forged together in the heat of battle, in the blade of our swords. Brothers in blood, and in so much more.

Kronos remembers storming through a village, leaving nothing but smoking embers behind. Twisted, blackened skeletons were left coiled between the stones, adorning the wreckage with their mortality. He smiled then, open with joy, and next to him Methos smiled brilliantly, revelling in the bloodbath.

He watches as Methos hurries for his car, furtive and afraid. It tastes like ashes in his mouth.

[100, Q to Kronos]

And Kronos.

Title: Mirage
Fandom: Highlander
Summary: Kronos and his memories
Point: Cali, so very.

*

In the desert, under the sands, the dry heat preserves everything. The dead shrivel and brown. Papers turn brittle and crisp. The rocks remain the same.

In the cool cave, under the soft, plush carpeting of fine sand, broken tiles still have the same figures engraved on them. They once adorned the walls of the inner sanctum of this shrine, and now they're hidden from all prying human eyes... Except those who know where to seek.

Kronos runs fingertips over the faces, the letters, as if he's afraid they'd crumble under his rough hands. But they've survived for so long in the peace of the desert, and his touch is feather-light. The tiles remain unchanging. The story depicted in them is the same, and Kronos traces it.

Gods among men, on their mighty thrones, and tales of past glory. In the crude but beautiful stone he finds only the impressions, but to him its so real he can smell the smoke, the blood. He can hear the echoes of the screams, of metal clashing with metal. Figures of four brothers; one with the sun around his head, one with the wings of an eagle, one with the tongue of a snake and the claws of a lynx. One with half his face in black and half in white...

Kronos inhales, and behind the dry dust and the musty smell of the cave, he thinks he can recognise Methos' scent, oil on warm skin and just a whiff of copper. He can feel the tinge of it on his tongue.

Eventually he leaves the cavern, sliding in the narrow passage between rocks and careful to hide his tracks. He doesn't want anyone to go in here. This place will be his alone, forever. Full of memories. Sacred.

He sidles out from the rocky corridor into a small ravine, and around its edges there is some vegetation, the grey-green weeds that seem to live on air and sand alone. The quiet is different here, less deep, filled with calls of birds from above, of the wind passing over the dunes. Kronos climbs out, looks around him to make sure he wasn't followed, not that anyone would dare trail him in the desert. He stretches and looks behind him, into the ravine.

The corridor is no longer there. Where once a narrow but plainly visible darkness indicated entrance, there was now the smooth, uninterrupted face of the rock.

[end]

Incubare; to lie upon

Title: Incubare
Fandom: Highlander
Summary: Methos at night
Point: Cali

*

Kronos in the evenings smelled of blood and smoke. Even if he woke in the mornings and bathed in lavender scented warm waters, by nightfall he'd be covered with the death of the day. Methos used to welcome his brother into his tent and make love to him under the furs, inhaling the man's stink like it was the sweetest perfume.

He can smell it now, metallic tang in his nose and in the back of his throat. Smoke in Kronos' hair, and the warmth of him, sweat on pale, supple skin. Methos wants to be afraid when his brother mounts him, fear motivates, fear is survival; but he only finds it in himself to moan and arch, rubbing his body against the familiarity, against the smell of moonlit sex.

The windows are all wide open, and the brightness of the night shines in Kronos' eyes like the stars themselves dance around the fire in his soul. His mouth tastes vaguely of charred meat and fresh spring waters, and Methos drinks it in thirstily. He doesn't think about the present, about his life, his friends, or the morning that will soon come, that already threatens to appear from the pink, brightening edges of the sky. Methos only thinks of now, of flesh moving wetly on flesh. His moans are a rhythmic soundtrack to Kronos' movements inside him.

He drifts to sleep in clouds of warm, sated tranquility, and drifts back to awareness when the sun's already high up in the sky, halfway to noon. There is a pleasant ache in his limbs and inside him, reminiscent of a night of carnal pleasures. But memory is a like a bucket of cold, scummy water, washing over him with the knowledge that Kronos is long gone, decaying away in the submarine base. Methos has seen the Quickening himself.

In the back of his mind, a familiar chuckle fades away into the distance, leaving bittersweet traces of dream behind.

[end]