[FanFic] 30 Cuddles (16/30 Complete)

[The Jenn]

Believe it or not, I did these drabbles back in December of 2007 and never got around to posting them. xD They're based on prompts from the "30 Cuddles" challenge. I was doing them in conjunction with Kari, both of us picking a prompt and doing our separate drabbles based on that phrase before showing them to one another. Each ended up quite different! It was really fun. These are all pre-kids in their relationship, so very early on. Notice the sort-of-sanity in sweet little Femi.

Having stumbled across them, I figured I'd share. Now I'll probably be doing a few drabbles each with other pairings, because they were terribly fun to do.

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15) the setting sun

Femi didn’t notice the sun slowly beginning to set, wrapped up in blankets as she was in front of a roaring fire and snuggled under the arm of her Kazifel. Today was a day for being lazy and playing with her dolls, watching her love sew something with a pretty pattern and lots of fringe, and generally pretending that the entire world consisted of their fire-lit room.

It had gotten much colder over the past few weeks and lightly falling snow was a constant, building up to a respectable foot in some places. Had she been outside, she would have admired the few scattered rays of the sun dappling the snow golden through the treetops as it sunk below the horizon.

As it was, she was simply very glad to be /indoors/, where she could feel the warmth of the fire through her cocoon of blankets and wolf.

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26) count the stars

Night had fallen far too quickly in the winter for Femi's peace-of-mind, especially since they finished their business in the neighboring village later than she expected. Stupid shopkeep trying to harass her. She really didn't like that man at all.

And now it was dark and they were walking home through the Wood and she was on-edge and jumpy. She'd lived here all her life, but that didn't lessen her anxiety. It only made her more intimately aware of the kinds of things that hunted at night, and many of them would have nothing against making a snack of two wandering Cards.

Not that they would be such an easy meal, she and her King. She hugged onto his arm and shivered, turning her head to the sky. The canopy was thinner here and she could see glimpses of the night sky, dotted with stars.

"Kazifel," she murmured, distracting herself from the fear – some of the beasties could smell fear, "how many stars do you think there are in the sky? Have you ever tried to count them, living where you could see them all? I've never seen a sky without trees before..."

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28) close to perfect; almost paradise; halfway to eden

Femi stared at the canvas, brush poised about an inch from the surface, dark gray paint coating each tiny strand. She slowly lowered the brush. She scratched her nose. She bit her lip.

Was it done?

She heard his ticking footsteps before she felt his arms wrapping securely around her, warm and solid against her back. The brush rose and blindly tickled against some part of him. She twisted her head and smiled, seeing a small stripe of paint across his nose, charcoal against the black. It wasn't like he would mind the smell very much. It was paint, after all.

"What do you think?" she asked, expression changing to one of hesitance. Did he like it? He had to like it... /had/ to. This was the first time she'd painted since she found him, so of course her first painting would be of him. His pants had been the last thing she worked on for some reason and she hadn't let him see the painting before today.

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11) maximum heart rate

Jerking awake in the middle of the night with a gasp, heart racing and choking back tears, Femi reached blindly for the warm body next to hers and clung as tightly as she could. Her hands dug into his fur and her tail curled tightly around his waist.

She hated nightmares. She /hated/ nightmares!

When she felt arms wrap around her in return, Kazifel making a worried whimpering noise as he held her close, she let out a few more gasping breaths before burying her head against him. "Never leave me," she begged him, voice pleading and almost coming out as a squeak. "Please. Please, please, Kazifel, please. Never ever leave me. I would die. I would just /die/. I would never live without you."

He pressed her more tightly against him in reflex and she just clung, too upset to say anything else. What a horrible, horrible nightmare. It had been all too real and for those terrifying few seconds, she had believed him gone.

And then she woke up next to him and flailing like a silly little twit. She was so stupid. But it didn't matter. He was there.

---

6) are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Femi stared thoughtfully at the new comforter, a belated gift from her mother for her birthday after she'd complained of the cold one time too many for the feline to stand. It was a creamy white with large yellow flowers printed all over it, covering the entire surface of the material. It was also stuffed full of down and poofed in feathery pockets of soft and squishy.

Her head turned slowly to look at Kazifel, pink eyes bright with anticipation. In front of them, the fire had just begun to kick up. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking, love?"

At the same time, her hand smoothed up his arm and she leaned closer to breathe into his ear. "It smells like my parents' house. I don't want to sleep in it if it smells like my parents' house. I think we need to make it smell like us." To emphasize her point, she leaned just the tiniest bit more and nibbled along the edge of his ear, arms going around his slender waist.

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5) up a lazy river with me

A large patch of summer sun shone through a gap in the trees and onto the stream near Femi's village, making the water glisten as it ran by. It bubbled up onto a few small rocks and over submerged branches, making a lazy sort of noise as it went by.

The squirrel floated in the deepest part of the creek, barely up to her neck and touching her toes to the bottom. She held her breath and slowly floated to the surface, reaching out to clasp Kazifel’s hand as he sat on the shore. This was a thin stretch of water and she could reach out to him with no trouble.

"Don’t let me drift down," she told him in a rushing squeak of breath, quickly drawing it in again so that she didn’t sink. Beside her, the wet and massive poof of her tail floated serenely in the water like an exotic plant. She smiled at him, cheeks puffed out with air so that he could barely tell.

[The Jenn]

Whereas all of those old drabbles were past Femi and Kazi, the new ones are going to be various characters of mine and their significant cuddlers. Please don't shoot me for the saccharine of the above drabbles. It's just... how the darn squirrel is. xD;

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1) come a little closer

Obnoxious little minx. Donnie sprawled on her bed, staring at the human girl who was oh-so-deliberately not noticing her pointed look as she brushed out her hair in front of the Queen’s mirror.

They were both naked. They were both sweaty. This, in and of itself, should have been incentive enough. But no, she was teasing. It was late evening and they’d both finished work for the night. She’d just suddenly found herself with a lap full of human as she was tidying up her desk and it ended up working out that they both needed dinner. Hem.

Alright, enough was enough. "Come a little closer and I'll brush your hair for you?" she offered in a deliberately innocent and not at all naughty tone. That would lure her in, surely.

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14) whispers

Femi didn’t like the way people talked about her sometimes. Whenever her aging and ailing mother had guests over, they always whispered amongst themselves when she walked into the room. If she was visiting a shop with Kazifel, sometimes the other customers would whisper questions to one another and the shopkeep. It always sounded like a sea of little hisses around her until someone approached her with a big smile and a simple question. The questions were normal. The whispers were not.

Cuddled up in a blanket by the fire at home, she looked up at her husband with big, worried pink eyes. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” She hated thinking about things like that. They never ended happily, except when he made them happy. In her more lucid moments, she wondered what she’d done to make everyone act so strangely. “Me. Something’s wrong with me?”

Everything instantly felt better when he wrapped his arms around her and she relaxed with a sigh, temporarily forgetting about all of the whispers. There, it was all better now.

---

22) midnight hour

Midnight had never been a very significant hour for Rogers. Work, go home, eat, do something mildly entertaining, sleep, miss the hour entirely. That was before he’d gotten into a relationship with a stripper who had a daytime job to worry about.

Now he stayed up late some nights just to make sure he didn’t miss it, that magical hour on the late shifts when Rosewood made his way home and he got to greet his swan with a wagging tail and a sloppy kiss. Sometimes they had a late meal. Other times they had a romp. Still others they collapsed into bed after Rosewood took a quick shower and just cuddled until they passed out. Good times.

He waited on the couch in the living room, trying not to feel as much like a faithful companion waiting for his master to come home as some part of him /did/, and sat on his tail to keep it from wagging. Any minute now.

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27) you smell good

Lavender and chamomile. Those were the scents that constantly surrounded Fluffy, permeated throughout her fur thanks to the magical assistance of one creepy canine barber. He had been quite kind and Fluffy remembered the visit in a good way. She certainly appreciated the result. She always smelled good.

Whenever her poor mistress was having a stressful day and she wanted to get away from the excitable people and children that surrounded her, she could walk over to her pet and just bury her face in the Ace's fur. It wasn't a strong enough smell to magically calm the woman, not with that 'Q' on her chest, but it helped. That and the softly rumbling purr, and the silky paws making bread on her side, and the general warmth.

Fluffy smelled good because her Xiven wanted her to smell good, and because it made them both happy. That was quite enough for her. She turned herself into a snuggly ball of cat and purred away.

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10) afterglow; put your clothes on

Parzifal lazed in the afterglow of his 'first time', feeling unwilling and almost unable to move from the cold rug that was slowly chilling him from the right side up. He was even more unwilling to move away from the warm, naked body of the woman snuggled against him. This was wonderful. He couldn't have asked for a better... well, lover, really. At least this once, lover. She was beautiful and older, much older, which added to the thrill in an odd way.

Still, his butt was starting to go numb from the cold. With a reluctant sigh and murmured apologies, he let go of her and awkwardly stood, reaching for the pants that lay crumpled on the floor between the rug and the chair. He could have just changed into his biped form, but it seemed less appropriate at the moment than sliding on his clothing and sitting back down on the carpet cross-legged. Now he had the advantage of seeing her, all of her, laying there and watching him with laughter in her eyes. What a woman.

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21) home sick

That gloopy green stuff dribbling from his nose wasn't a good sign. Neither was the hacking cough that sent little yellow bits of ick flying through the air. The shaky walking and fuzzy flaming eyesight and itchy back fur weren't all that hot either. Jak eventually came to the conclusion that he had a cold, after falling on his face and having trouble getting up.

He was currently on their pile of bedding, half-burrowed under scraps of blankets and towels and fabric, staring at his brother with eyes that no longer existed and a fiery replacement that had trouble focusing. "But Awwwwwwleeeeey," he whined in a thick, sticky voice, "I want anoother stooooryyyyy."

Never mind that he was an adult. Never mind that his brother didn't have very good stories. He was bored and tired and achy and full of nasty drippy crap and he wanted another story. And maybe a cuddle. But that might have to wait until later. Sigh. Sneeze. Hack. Sniffle.

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23) waking up alone

It wasn't so bad, waking up alone, when you barely remembered that anyone else had been there in the first place. Maybe it was a dank alley, or maybe it was a grassy plain. Bed and morning could happen anywhere and anytime when he answered the call of his cloak. He barely registered the fact that the body slept, so preoccupied with himself and his safe little cocoon. It was almost like not existing, except he did and he was safe.

Alone used to terrify him when he'd first been caught in his cloak's snare. Alone usually meant cold, and blood, and death, and another day of hungry walking. Now alone meant privacy, serenity, simplicity, and a focus on his duty as a reaper of souls.

Sometimes he fancied he missed the warmth of another body, when the sentience of the cloak was busy focusing on some poor dead or dying soul and his mind was left to muse without interruption. Rhi had always been warm. But then, he didn't need the warmth anymore. The cold was fine. So was the alone, because he wasn't alone. Not really. Not anymore.

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9) what’s that sound?

Sometimes the stupidest sounds could bring back memories. The flutter of paper in a sudden window gust sent her mind back to delicate wings and an unlikely flight. The clicking of a bird's claws on the cool floor made her think of feet that had been clawed, but certainly not avian. The dull thud of two servants who thought they were alone and unobserved in a closet took her thoughts... elsewhere.

That one was less stupid and more obvious, but still. It counted. Noises. Sometimes being aurally fixated could be a serious drawback, especially when her memory decided that it wasn't going to let go of the everyday sounds of a long-dead relationship.

It didn't help that she had a much more /recent/ memory of certain sounds. A sigh. A moan. A grunt. They could be so damned distracting at the worst possible moments. That night should never have happened, and yet it had. It just needed to never happen again.

A giggle in the doorway made her head snap up, but it was only a visitor talking to someone in the hallway. Damn it all.

[Lucca]

Oooh. These are very good. Awww, Femi...she was sane once. Mostly. Poor squirrel. The other ones were really good, too.

[DaeSiggil]

*nod nod* I agree with Lucca ^^ Those are nicely written.
Heh *shifty eyes* Is Femi normally not sane? *big grin* Awesome

[Lucca]

Since the death of her favorite son, she's been slowly slipping into complete and utter insanity. ._.;;

[Vyn]

<3 [loves on these] Very well written :3 Vyn enjoys Jenn's drabbles very much. I request more. :3

Femi, 'sane' or 'insane' is precious. She loves her Kazi so very much<3 And I find I'm terribly fond of Donnie/Raina. XD Cuteness the both of them<3

Rosewood/Rogers is also a love of mine, his cute canine excitement to see his master makes me glee<3 and Fluffy's feline content to be whatever makes Xiven happy is also quite adorable win. ^^

[The Jenn]

Aww, thanks guys. <3 Femi was never really right in the head, but at least she was a lot more balanced for a while there with Kazifel. She's always had serious issues. They're just a lot more serious now.

Donnie/Raina makes me super happy in their casual fling. And Rosewood/Rogers is always awesome in my book. He'd never call the man his master out loud, unless they were doing some serious roleplaying, but that's sort of how the relationship ended up in a much more canine way. Especially with the swan so fond of playful BDSM.

Two more, chosen by Vyn.

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4) schadenfreude [german for happiness at the misfortune of others]

Something in Donnie would have liked to see Sadie fail. Would have loved it. Knowing that she'd achieved the Queenship of her suit while Sadie, whose original ambition it had been, couldn't manage it? There would have been something ridiculously delicious about the whole situation that would have made her laugh for hours. It would have been the very definition of ironic satisfaction.

Then again, another part of her remembered some of their late-night conversations about the Courts. They'd been snuggled together, or spread across a bed and holding hands, or just curled up and looking at one another. They'd whispered then, talked about plans for the future, building a life together and somehow working both of their ambitions into the whole thing. They'd been pipe dreams, cloudy fantasies that never could have stood up under the light of day, but in those soft twilight hours it had seemed that anything could be possible if only they wanted it to be.

It was a moot point now. They were the Queens of Diamonds and Spades, decidedly not together despite a drunken mistake, and one of them would fall eventually Hopefully it would be from old age. Probably it wouldn't. And then maybe the other would receive some sort of hollow satisfaction from being the last one standing.

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18) smile for me

Jak stared at the little girl, his red eyes housed in the body of a Lowland/Sorgaire feline, touched with bits of fake rot across his left arm. He wore an animal rodent form, whiskers crinkled and paws full of claws. She was a pure Lowlander, no older than six, curled on the street corner with a cup in front of her. Brown eyes looked up at him with a mixture of fear and tired hope. "Spare a coin, mister?" she asked in a timidly hopeful voice. "Please?" Then she cringed, as if expecting a sharp word or a kick.

"D'aww, suuuure!" he agreed with a magnanimous grin, fishing around in his pouch for a handful of small coins. Couldn't give her too much or the other beggars would try to steal it. He knew how things like that worked. He'd lived ina pile of garbage at an alley junction. He heard them out there all the time, arguing and giving street assignments to the urchins.

Then he chucked them in her cup and reached forward to tap her canine nose, ignoring her flinch and continuing to grin. "It'll get better," he whispered. "C'mon, smile for me. If you smile, I'll buy you a sandwich and tell you a story. I know some reeeally good stories. An' I won't touch you again unless you want a hug. I ain't no creeper."

[Kari Muffin]

XD I squee of happy. I do love Femi/Kazi for obvious reasons. Enjoy all your writing. <3!

[Lucca]

Aww, haha. XD I like the one with Jak. He can almost be sweet sometimes.