#agentmalkere

They throw AO3 statistics at me.

Pop!

SMASH!

Q stared reflectively at the new hole in his flat’s window and then took a moment to silence the intruder alarm on his phone that his home security system had set off.  A damp draught gusted through the air.  He glanced over at James.  James had a bottle of champagne in one hand and looked like he was seriously considering planting his face in the other – or possibly taking a fortifying swig of alcohol straight from the bottle.  Q couldn’t help himself.

“You seem to have gone off early,” he quipped.  James closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Q fancied that he heard a quiet groan.  “Find something to cover that up with before any more rain gets in.  I need to calm down my security system.”

By the time Q finished assuring his computers that he wasn’t being menaced in any way that wasn’t enthusiastically consensual, James had put a folded up bin liner and some gaffer tape to good use.  He offered Q a glass of property-damaging champagne.

“Now, where were we?” James gave him that small, impish smile that really shouldn’t be so charming.

Q accepted the proffered champagne.

“I believe you were attempting to seduce me through very thinly veiled innuendoes disguised as negotiations for an exploding pen.”  Q sat back down on the couch and took a sip of his wine.

James’ smile widened just a hair.

“Mmm, that does sound about right.”

Q reclined further into the couch cushions and raised an eyebrow with a small smile of his own,

In the Wastes, safety is an illusion, a heat mirage chased by delusional folk.  A barely understood, Beforetime word with almost no meaning left.  There is no safety in the Wasteland.  Not in numbers, not in weapons.  Not even in flight, though running is the closest thing to it you can get.  You sleep with one eye open.  You watch the horizon.  You reach for a weapon at any unexplained sound.

Max has lived in the Wastes for thousands and thousands of days – each day grinding out such soft notions with grit and death and blood.  He’d all but forgotten them.

Now he sits in almost confused silence.  Around him green leaves rustle in a breeze like sighs.  There is moisture in the air, and it feels strange against his skin.  His back is pressed against Furiosa’s as they sit of the ground and share this strange, green silence.  (When there is no wall or vehicle to protect your blind spot, a trusted back will do.) No one else is in the Hanging Garden at this moment.  Not Dag nor any of her Greenthumbs.  The silence here is different from the silence of the Wasteland.  There’s no horizon to watch.

Max’s eyelids feel heavy, and he blinks to keep them open.  Furiosa lets out an inaudible sigh.  Max feels her shoulders rise and fall.  This green silence is strange and confusing but also familiar.  Max slowly, hesitantly slides his left hand back until it is just brushing against the flesh fingers of Furiosa’s right hand.  He leaves it there.  After a while Furiosa hooks two of her fingers through his.

Yay! I have been tagged for a thing! I love being tagged for a thing! Thanks, @ionfusionpunk!

Let’s shed light on some of your favourite lines you’ve ever written—you may pick one, two or a hundred, that’s up to you!

(Hmmm... these are probably going to be more “chunks” than lines.... Oh, well! 8D )

 1) From my WIP A Gift, Freely Given (Mad Max: Fury Road, Max-isn’t-exactly-human-and-hasn’t-noticed!AU) 

He remembers Before.  Remembers so much farther back than he should and doesn’t understand why or how.  Remembers warm soil beneath his feet teeming with life and great dirty gums overhead and her laughter crashing across the rocks in sprays of damp salt.  Remembers her hair that swayed and twisted like kelp. It’s faint – muddled and hazy – but he remembers.  More sharply he remembers the pain.  The pain that fell from the sky and burned his skin as she withered and blew away leaving nothing but the salt of her tears crusting the ground.  Remembers how the life teeming around him slowly faded with her until he was alone.  And he remembers that he was never made to be alone. (Made?  How could he have been made?)  Every day he is dying, dying, dying, but he never dies.  He doesn’t remember going mad with the loneliness and the anger and the unrelenting pain, but he must have.  Because he is finally waking up.  As if he’s becoming truly aware of himself for the first time in a long time.

He never quite runs out of water. Always seems to have just enough guzzoline to see him through even if only barely.  His hand heals clean despite the rusty bolt that pierced clear through his palm.  This does not seem strange to him (this is the way it’s always been), but it finally occurs that perhaps some would find it strange.

2) From What You Knead (Naruto, Butterfly Effect!AU and honestly I adore the hell out of the whole story)

“Hey, Kakashi-nii, is that your gennin team?”

Kakashi straightened up to find Naruto pointing at his old team photo.

“More or less, though we were all chuunin when that was taken.”

“You were so short!” Naruto laughed.  “And-” He paused, squinted more closely at the picture, and then screeched at an ear-bleedingly loud volume, “OH MY GOSH, YOU WERE TAUGHT BY THE YONDAIME?!?”

Kakashi waited until the ringing in his ears had subsided before responding. It was okay – he probably hadn’t needed that eardrum anyway.