open post : picture prompt

[pseudocode]

OPEN PICTURE PROMPT MEME



respond to a character in this post with a picture!
or a few!
(this tumblr may be helpful.)
i will set the scene based on the picture.
fun ensues!
(link if they're particularly huge, numerous or nsfw, please!)
or you can leave me a comment and i'll hit you with picture prompts instead.

aus are totally chill.
if someone's on my muselist but not this post
hit me up and i'll drop a comment for them.

Comments

shiro iori | kill la kill

[gusset]

[ i assume vague poly stuco pile but lmk if you want me to hold off! ]

i am ALMOST as thirsty as shay

[symphonise]

or let's go to tokyo disney, iorin

i'm here for you w the hose ; i went prose but i can bracket it up if you want

[gusset]

The house is velvet-soft quiet at four-thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday, the floors warm from sun passing through windows and the rooms quiet with the hum of late afternoon laziness. Shiro leaves his desk and his study behind when his brain starts to buzz behind his eyelids, raking his fingers through his newly short hair, and follows snatches of sound down the hallway and through the double doors.

The record player was a housewarming gift from his uncle, but the only one who gets any use out of it regularly is, unsurprisingly, Nonon. Shiro's used it enough to know how to lift and stow the needle, though, and that's exactly what he leans sideways to do upon stepping through the doorway.

His voice is a poor substitute for Debussy. "Nonon," he says, her name round in his mouth, and crosses the room to cast shadow across her face, lit from behind by the afternoon sun. (Satsuki he is not, but then they've all had a taste for the dramatic, from time to time.)

how dare you use prose in this writing hobby

[symphonise]

It's too lovely an afternoon for silence to linger. Of course, Nonon doesn't pass any chance to fill an empty void with the dynamics of sound, and everyone she cares about has a decent record collection. She makes sure of it. Enough hours are spent alone that day that she can't help but want to lure Shiro away from his work.

Her mouth forms a small 'o' when he comes to turn off her music sooner than she expects. She turns to face him fully, and she laughs. "Oh, my, are you trying to be a Kiryuuin today?" Her lips stretch in a teasing smile. Too much time around Satsuki ensures she doesn't have to shield her eyes from his natural backlight.

"Take a break. It's the least you can do for shutting off Debussy." The way she phrases it makes it sound like a demand, but her tone lacks the usual haughtiness that edges her rough voice.

burn the witch at the stake etc etc

[gusset]

"Hardly. I was lucky with timing - the sun doesn't bow to my whims," he says, even, honest. Never mind that Satsuki is, in every way that matters, their sun.

He leans close, touching thin fingers to her cheek and gently brushing their mouths together. It's a hello, not a come-on. (To be fair, with Nonon that may be enough.) "I'll be happy to, if that's what it takes to make shutting it off up to you." He doesn't smile much, and he doesn't now, but his eyes are bright behind his glasses as he moves to settle beside her.

it's entropy

[symphonise]

She sighs. Leave it to Shiro to be practical about her teasing. Houka has come around and become a little less logical with his bantering, but it's not as sure a deal with the tailor in her life.

Unsatisfied with his greeting, her fingers seek his shirt and tug him closer to her. "We may be planets that revolve around a sun, but we give meaning to it." Nonon will follow Satsuki to the very end (whatever end, every end, any end), but she won't belittle herself for it. She leans up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Watch a movie with me?"

She falls back to her natural height and rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. "Or take a catnap with me?"

sob how did a week pass

[gusset]

By now, his straight man act is nearly expected. Nonon's teasing is sweetest when it has room to bounce off of, like the flash in a photograph. And to be honest, it's funnier for him this way.

He goes with her pull, because what else can he do? Leave her reaching for him? His palms find her elbows as she leans up, as much support as he can really give, and he does smile, just a little. "A star system only hosts life when planets surround it," he agrees - and it's only to her he'd say that to, the only who'd understand what he doesn't mean about Satsuki with the metaphor.

He lets her arms go, but reaches slow for her wrists instead. "A movie... and then a catnap," he offers, slowly. He'd finished work early for a reason, after all.

i have no room to judge hides face in shame... also feel free to ignore

[symphonise]

She lets him catch her wrists, and her smile is sly like a cat that caught a canary -- or a snake about to strike at prey. If he's staying, it means she wins. "Oh, my, how indulgent. Did you work hard for this, or should I count my lucky stars?"

She giggles, light and girlish. It delights her when her whims are catered to normally, and she's vibrant when it's by one so close to he heart. The push and pull of their group is expected and comfortable, but a little tenderness goes a long way. She hums low in her throat, the few notes her vocal chords don't automatically destroy.

"I'll let you choose the movie." Her taste in movies is dark and full of horrors and not conducive to slumber.

i could never ignore you

[gusset]

"I may have pushed a few projects through to a stopping point in order to have some free time," he says, not confirming one way or another, but she knows what he'd do to for them.

His grip pulses on her wrists, gentle. Neither of them have much time for softness, so he takes it where he can get it. "We can pick together," he says.

His mouth quirks, and he drawls an easy joke. "I don't have as overactive an imagination as Sanageyama, so a creepy art film won't give me nightmares." He has a stronger stomach than that.

shock

[paramountcy]

give me s/t and i'll find s/t for you tomorrow plz

500 asw madokas

the queen of the desert has arrived

[gusset]

or


there's a boobtouch so i'm gonna link it

or some combination of all of the above???

an oasis in the sand.

[paramountcy]

"I'm more hindrance than help as a mannequin."

Satsuki says it, but she's statue-still where she stands on the platform, save for the fidgety, gradual turning of the bracelet on her wrist. She's not made for stillness, even now, and as patient a model as she's been for Shiro over the years, she's never lost the energy entirely, the compulsion to be active always.

Glamour, at least, she can do. When she wears Shiro's work, it'll fit her like a second skin; in public they'll make a fine set. In public, she's illuminated, in private, contained. But the further she departs from Ragyo's cure, the more those lines are blurring. She watches him work, thumb turning the bracelet on her wrist.

"Turn?" Traveling has its disadvantages. The light is weaker than either of them are used to, and she's prepared to move to catch the lamp's good light.

i'm oasis and here's wonderwall

[gusset]

For all that she claims to be anything but a perfect model, he's never had anyone under his fingertips capable of her stillness. (Except, perhaps, Sanageyama, but he always ruined it by talking.) Even when he works with professionals - and there are a number of those, these days - they don't manage to have her brightness even with a dress half-constructed around her. "You're never a hindrance," he says, without looking up. Hand-beading this dress has been weeks in the making; he's done as much of it as he could with an actual mannequin, the memory of the curve of her hip enough as he drew curves in glimmering, glittering glass and thread. The final adjustments he can only make when he's sure of how the beads and the fabric will lay against her are those he's doing now, long practiced pulls of the needle leaving seafoam clouded glass and peach-pink pearls in their wake.

He looks up when she asks about turning. He's been sewing her into things long enough by now that she always seems to know. He still isn't sure what his tell is. "Yes, please. Carefully, this knot isn't tied off yet." His free hand rests heavy against the back of her thigh to guide her to the right angle under the lamps.

[paramountcy]

"Is that so? I'll take your word for it, then."

She breathes out heavily once - her own tell - in response to his hand on her thigh. She is unfailingly patient, most of the time, about most things, so she waits for him to guide her into place, fabric barely rustling as she slowly turns.

Satsuki turns the bracelet on her wrist again, breathing normally. She's never anything but careful - about things like this, anyway. Each movement is carefully considered, her posture practiced. She's been his model often enough. His cautioning would be an insult coming from anyone else.

Isn't it strange that they spend their (more infrequent, now) time together in rented spaces, spent stitching the finishing touches onto projects? She's been asked before, and it would be strange, if anyone expected normalcy from them. Satsuki puts too much effort into protecting strange and abnormal humanity for it to be anything other than fitting. Satsuki's content in his hardworking silence, and they both need to keep their hands busy.

"They'll be mass producing these next summer." Satsuki turns her bracelet.

i'm mad at you for ignoring my hilarious wonderwall joke

[gusset]

"What an honor," he says, lightly teasing as much as it is sincere, and his fingers linger three beats too long after he's satisfied with her new angle. He shuffles his weight from one knee to the other as he leans close to correct the lay of the last line of beads.

Sewing clothes with the disconcerting buzz of life under his fingers for the first five years of his career has made sewing clothes without them an adventure in finding that life somewhere else. The buzz of life under his fingers now is Satsuki, the thrum of her patient breath and her bracelet twisting slowly around the delicate, too-strong line of her wrist. Familiar and sweet, not ill-fitting and wrong.

"If history repeats itself, the prototype will be the finest one of all. No doubt because of who wore it," he says, looking up at her. He shifts to peel a pin from the cushion on the table, putting the end of his needle between curved-in lips.

what wonderwall joke :)

[paramountcy]

"Flattery's to be my remuneration, then? It's theft you're getting away with tonight. Iori." Satsuki can tease back. It's missing all the barbs their friends use in their banter. In private, her edges have always buffed down quieter around Shiro. She can't even make small talk around him, because none of their conversations have ever seemed small.

A tailor's hands are never empty - and then some. Thread, needle, pins, pegs, binding, beading, boning, mesh...lace. Skin. It's no wonder that given the chance, he built himself four more arms.

And here she stands, fooling with her baubles like a heartsick teenager.

"Do you need me?" she asks, an offer of her idle, anxious hands and nothing more. Satsuki releases the metal she's pinched between her fingers, dropping one cupped palm in offer. Her affections aren't fickle, but it's hard to tell where you stand, sometimes, having lived so long on a precipice.

rude???

[gusset]

His eyebrows rise. Of course she takes her moment when he's got metal in his mouth. She's never been the type to let weakness go unchallenged, instinct coiling in her limbs. He works quickly with the pin in his hand, gathering cloth flush against cloth and sliding the pin through with a push. When it lays as he'd wanted it to, he peels the needle out of his mouth, point held out between his fingers.

"I suppose I must pull together some kind of bonus to offset your disappointment, then, Lady Satsuki," he answers. "Robbing a model her due is in bad taste." What kind of bonus, well. That's up to her.

He reaches out again for the pincushion. Usually he has an assistant, people who do the simple pinning and hemming work for him. Not for Satsuki. This work is his work, for better or worse. Do you need me, she asks, as if he hasn't spent the last decade wanting to be what she needed. "If you could hold this and pass pins as I need them, that would make this process faster," he admits, holds it gently in the space above his head.

here's mine

[paramountcy]

you get numbers. 6 is a little nsfw.

1 2 3 4 5 6

i went with the awful route are you surprised

[gusset]

At eleven-thirty, the house is empty of all but the barest of staff, or nearly so, the click-clack of Shiro's boots echoing in hallways, the whisper of his uniform along the floor the hissing of ghosts. The house is nearly empty, but Satsuki Kiryuin rests only when she must, and light leaks out low under the door of her room as he raps twice-then-three-times. He opens the door without an answer, but then he'd never expected one. Lady Satsuki sits alone in a room only half-lit, cutting a shadow against the floor as moonlight seeps through her windows. After a scan across the room, neither her stalwart bulwark nor the castle in her mind are anywhere in sight. In their absence, the lack of Sanageyama or Inumuta seems natural. His uncle's absence is the least natural thing he notices, but he is only human despite what he pretends, and it wouldn't surprise Shiro to know he's been sent to rest while the lady of the house burned the midnight oil.

"Lady Satsuki," Shiro says, pushing the door closed until it clicks closed with finality in the silence. "I have the report you asked for."

He's the Sewing Club President on paper. He's meant to knit scarves, repair stuffed animals, design dresses, on paper. In reality, his work is more complicated. He sews clothing that lives, he weaves subterfuge in plain sight. The photographs in the folder he holds carefully out to her are people they already know too well, sun-bright gold hair and pale skin against white cloth. "They were seen separately this morning in Greece, despite the news reports about Turkey," he says, soft.

[paramountcy]

"Greece is an economic sinkhole," Satsuki says cruelly, thinking of it not as a country, a place where people live and work and eat, but as a marketing drain. "Doubtless they've slipped their hands beneath the table. I expected this."

She accepts the folder; it hits the polished wood in front of her with a skin-sharp smack, falling open. Closer perusal means uncrossing her legs, extracting herself from the deceptively deep shell of her chair.

After a moment, Satsuki says, just as coldly, "Have the debate team captain's uniform mocked up." Then she goes quiet again.

Without her tea or Soroi's company (she's memorized the sound of his breathing - is that strange? No normal girl would have to), Satsuki is left with silence and a series of worrisome thoughts. She forgets herself. Looking down at the report on her desk, she says, "Thank you, Iori. Is that all?"

Shortest thread ever if it is.

[gusset]

She's right, of course. The Grecian market's death throes have been a footnote on the 'shit we already know' memo for years. He gathers his hands behind his back to wait for her attentions again, watching her move in her chair over the rim of his glasses. "At once, Lady Satsuki," he answers, voice a whip cracking. In truth, the pieces for the initial test are ready, stored in his office under reinforced lock and DNA-coded key, waiting on her word.

In the spirit of the hour, his voice goes soft as he continues. "Of course," he says, her gratitude unneccessary but warm in his throat, and shuts his eyes for mere seconds. Is that all, when there's no end to this? They're turning a mountain of sand to concrete, grain by miniscule grain.

"That is the last of the evening's reports," he says, his hands falling to his sides, and it's not the Sewing Club President who asks: "have you considered retiring for the night? It seems unwise to run yourself ragged while they're away." Work will spur on away from the greedy eyes and greedy smiles of the Grand Couturier, but he can see the way she frays at the edges, the loom unraveling around her steel core.

[paramountcy]

Her thoughts echo his, unbidden. Is this really all they have to show for their weeks of work, tireless and persistent? Satsuki knows that to Ragyo, none the wiser, she appears tireless, working hard to earn her birthright with her human handicap.

In the morning there will be news of riots, a supply truck raided and torched. Bourgeois clothing becoming the stolen flags of the disenfranchised.

"There's no better time to work than when I'm unsupervised," she explains. "Then my mother might return and see how close we are to our goal." The coded language is familiar to both of them. Invoke one call, intend another.

Satsuki turns the folder over, spins it so its opening fold points away from her. Her smile is mechanical and doesn't nearly reach the rest of her face.

"Are you worried about me, Iori? There's no need to scold me." He hasn't explicitly scolded her, but she can sense the urge.

tfw you thought you tagged smth and didn't

[gusset]

It's easy to get lost in the obfuscation that is their livelihoods, to hide in argot and weaponize double-meanings. That puts honesty at a dangerous premium. He pays it now: "yes, Lady Satsuki, I am." If he hadn't been, before, the brittle smile she isn't really wearing would do it.

"An army with an exhausted head is likely to fall asleep on its feet. Your work can wait until morning," he says, staring at her.

He leans forward to touch his fingertips to the folder, resting heavy on the opening edge. She can't put down her burdens, and he wouldn't ask her to - but, at his heart, he's a tailor, and repairing that which sees wear is his bread and butter. "Please, Lady Satsuki," he says, just a notch softer.

it's ok i forgive

[paramountcy]

"It's not like you to beg." Her gaze drops to his hand, a gate sealing her away from her work, the roiling hatred that fuels vengeance. Satsuki may have earned Ragyo's despicable trust, but she still works better knowing that her mother is farther away.

Satsuki places her hand over Iori's, but just to push the document back towards him.

"Then, by your word. I'll retire" She stands. "Walk with me, so we can prepare for tomorrow." He's been at her side for such a short while tonight. Satsuki's request may be a bid to extend that closeness or just a way to hold him at arm's length. Comrade, not friend. She doesn't take personal calls.

[gusset]

"It's generally unnecessary," he answers, pulling away from the desk and taking the folder with him. He tucks it against his hip, and nods at her request-that-is-not-a-request, head bent for a long few seconds.

"Of course, Lady Satsuki," he says, raising his chin. "Shall I stand in for Uncle, this evening?" He understands her chilly bids for untouchability - supports them, knows they're necessary, no matter how much he wishes it were otherwise - but in the after-spaces of the school, their relationship still wears more than one coat. No matter how much happier they would be without the weight of childhood hand in hand to put aside.