moments of compromise
Mar. 10th, 2020 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: Moments of Compromise
Rating: PG
Series: Animorphs (original characters)
Wordcount: 723
Summary: Larkin's got a deal with her yeerk. They're just still working out some of the finer details.
Remarks: What to say - sometimes a wild AU just needs penning? Vivian belongs tokillyhawk.
It’s Larkin’s ears that prick to the strum of guitar chords, the warm throaty voice rising in harmony to sing something about rolling stones and way-finding. Larkin’s eyes find the singer lit up by the fuzzy lights circling the tiny stage, dark eyes half-lidded and foot gently bouncing a rhythm where it's crooked over one knee.
Idran is bored, though, and that makes it petty. Her gaze snaps back to the beer bottle in front of them, fingers picking restlessly at the unstuck edge of the label, and as much as she’s adapted to these last weeks of life as a reskinned alien Larkin still hates the feel of her body moving in ways she didn’t ask it to. She’d never even liked the idea of self-parking cars.
We’re leaving, Idran says, a sneer aimed directly at the pulse of Larkin’s irritation she knows it felt. This is pointless.
This is the point, Larkin retorts. Besides, you got somewhere better to be? We gonna go sit and stare at the monitor some more? Big whoop. At least my idea of fun comes with drinks.
Poking at Idran’s lack of current orders is risky, and it does kind of seethe a little, though the anger is less at her and more at the same indignation it’s been stewing in all week. No news is not good news, in the yeerk world. It got a body and it got out of the pool but so far all it’s gotten is drudge work, and it’s sulky.
Just about the only reason she’d successfully wheedled it into this outing. More than most hosts managed, at least; she’d always had a knack for negotiation.
Idran catches the thought and turns meaner. Drinks you use to mute your senses. Yes, only the most sophisticated of fun for the mighty human race.
See, Larkin says patiently, this is why your average visser is fixing to run straight into a wall on this whole invasion thing. It’s not about muting. Well, not for me.
No, Idran says, cruel with such casualness it barely counts, I know exactly what it’s about for you, and because it’s in this mood it pulls the memories up like a mother’s harsh hand dragging out soiled school books from where she’d tried to stuff them under the bed.
Nothing harsh about the memories, though. Soft skin and warm mouth, hands gliding and breath hitching. The face of the singer open in a laugh, the voice of the singer saying something that draws Larkin’s gaze down the line of her throat and makes something bright and happy pop in her brain; an overlapping cascade of bodies in a tangle, past dalliances. Private memories that she doesn’t like having this foreign intelligence pawing through, and Idran knows that, does this explicitly when it feels like making a point. Turns Larkin’s life out in vivid colour just so it can carelessly smear a new shade of disdain across them.
Except it’s still Larkin’s body they’re both sitting in as the memories pour through it, so there’s a pulse to quicken, a mouth to dry out, a stomach to give the low, heated flutter. And Idran is only five weeks out of the pool, still pausing in clumsy surprise when an ice cube bumps with stinging cold against their lips or a shin barks on the coffee table.
It’s not always disdain it feels when it rifles through her memories.
It’s a two-way street, the brain-share thing, so Larkin knows yeerks don’t really do attraction, there being little to be attracted to when you’re a blind slug. They don’t understand family, or love. Not in the human way.
But they do understand hunger. They understand wanting.
And Idran, at least, isn’t stranger to curiosity.
This time, when their eyes drift back to the singer, it’s not Larkin who moves them.
The ones who win this world won’t be the ones who think they’ve got us all figured out already, Larkin says.
Idran doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. It does take another sip of the beer and ensure she knows of its disgust at the flavour.
But when Vivian finishes her song, looks up across the room and lights a surprised, pleased smile across her face to see her, it’s Larkin who gets to curl a smile back.
Rating: PG
Series: Animorphs (original characters)
Wordcount: 723
Summary: Larkin's got a deal with her yeerk. They're just still working out some of the finer details.
Remarks: What to say - sometimes a wild AU just needs penning? Vivian belongs to
killyhawk.It’s Larkin’s ears that prick to the strum of guitar chords, the warm throaty voice rising in harmony to sing something about rolling stones and way-finding. Larkin’s eyes find the singer lit up by the fuzzy lights circling the tiny stage, dark eyes half-lidded and foot gently bouncing a rhythm where it's crooked over one knee.
Idran is bored, though, and that makes it petty. Her gaze snaps back to the beer bottle in front of them, fingers picking restlessly at the unstuck edge of the label, and as much as she’s adapted to these last weeks of life as a reskinned alien Larkin still hates the feel of her body moving in ways she didn’t ask it to. She’d never even liked the idea of self-parking cars.
We’re leaving, Idran says, a sneer aimed directly at the pulse of Larkin’s irritation she knows it felt. This is pointless.
This is the point, Larkin retorts. Besides, you got somewhere better to be? We gonna go sit and stare at the monitor some more? Big whoop. At least my idea of fun comes with drinks.
Poking at Idran’s lack of current orders is risky, and it does kind of seethe a little, though the anger is less at her and more at the same indignation it’s been stewing in all week. No news is not good news, in the yeerk world. It got a body and it got out of the pool but so far all it’s gotten is drudge work, and it’s sulky.
Just about the only reason she’d successfully wheedled it into this outing. More than most hosts managed, at least; she’d always had a knack for negotiation.
Idran catches the thought and turns meaner. Drinks you use to mute your senses. Yes, only the most sophisticated of fun for the mighty human race.
See, Larkin says patiently, this is why your average visser is fixing to run straight into a wall on this whole invasion thing. It’s not about muting. Well, not for me.
No, Idran says, cruel with such casualness it barely counts, I know exactly what it’s about for you, and because it’s in this mood it pulls the memories up like a mother’s harsh hand dragging out soiled school books from where she’d tried to stuff them under the bed.
Nothing harsh about the memories, though. Soft skin and warm mouth, hands gliding and breath hitching. The face of the singer open in a laugh, the voice of the singer saying something that draws Larkin’s gaze down the line of her throat and makes something bright and happy pop in her brain; an overlapping cascade of bodies in a tangle, past dalliances. Private memories that she doesn’t like having this foreign intelligence pawing through, and Idran knows that, does this explicitly when it feels like making a point. Turns Larkin’s life out in vivid colour just so it can carelessly smear a new shade of disdain across them.
Except it’s still Larkin’s body they’re both sitting in as the memories pour through it, so there’s a pulse to quicken, a mouth to dry out, a stomach to give the low, heated flutter. And Idran is only five weeks out of the pool, still pausing in clumsy surprise when an ice cube bumps with stinging cold against their lips or a shin barks on the coffee table.
It’s not always disdain it feels when it rifles through her memories.
It’s a two-way street, the brain-share thing, so Larkin knows yeerks don’t really do attraction, there being little to be attracted to when you’re a blind slug. They don’t understand family, or love. Not in the human way.
But they do understand hunger. They understand wanting.
And Idran, at least, isn’t stranger to curiosity.
This time, when their eyes drift back to the singer, it’s not Larkin who moves them.
The ones who win this world won’t be the ones who think they’ve got us all figured out already, Larkin says.
Idran doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. It does take another sip of the beer and ensure she knows of its disgust at the flavour.
But when Vivian finishes her song, looks up across the room and lights a surprised, pleased smile across her face to see her, it’s Larkin who gets to curl a smile back.
