sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-04 03:45 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-04 03:45 pm
Entry tags:
MISC. SHORTFICS: Shakespeare, Holmes, Wolfe, Historical, Comic-book
These are shortfics in various literary canons. They range from G to R ratings.
Warnings: None.
Petulant: Sherlock Holmes
Holmes had deft fingers, but not pretty ones; they were callused from the violin, burned from chemical experiments, and scarred from various small injuries suffered in the name of science. Watson knew them better than he knew his own; for a man who could staunchly take a bullet, rub shoulders with the wretched in opium dens, and prizefight with professionals, Holmes was oddly childish about nicks and scratches.
"My hands and eyes are the tools of my mind; without either I should starve, I imagine," he said, as Watson applied salve and a bandage to a badly-burnt finger. The doctor smiled.
"I am sure you would find a way to work one-handed," he said, and Holmes gave an unusually expressive shudder. "Have I hurt you?"
"No. You are always gentle," Holmes answered. Watson smiled, and raised the tip of the burnt finger to his lips, kissing it lightly.
"And you are petulant," he replied.
"Only because I reap such fine rewards from it," Holmes murmured.
Paint the World: Shakespeare
(Pardon the liberties taken with the language.)
"Aren't you tired of it?"
"Tired of what?" William asked, laying down his quill.
"This. Slinging ink to page. Don't you want to be out in the world? Sometimes, if I spend another minute on that stage..."
William smiled. "I'm nearly sixty. I prefer a warm room, an endless supply of paper."
"To match your endless ideas."
"To fill with words," William said kindly. "I don't need the world. I paint my world with words."
He tapped the line he'd just penned. "As you from crimes would pardon'd be, let your indulgence set me free."
"I like that."
"As do I."
Because: Hamlet
Horatio was a well bred young man of Danish royalty, and would never have dreamed of interfering in his friend's affairs without being invited.
If he thought Hamlet, even before his father's death, was circling madness with his courting of Ophelia, who showed her true feelings one minute and her father's reserve the next, he never spoke of it to Hamlet. He hated Ophelia, without really knowing why at first; he hated the way she possessed his friend, not just that she had him but that she occupied his thoughts even when absent.
"Don't you like her even a little?" Hamlet asked him, and since he had been asked, Horatio could answer.
"Not even a nutshell's worth," he replied.
"Why not?"
And Horatio had been waiting for that question above all others. Because he would speak if asked, and otherwise would be silent, and Hamlet had asked him.
"Because I love you," he said simply, and kissed Hamlet.
Eat: Nero Wolfe
"You will sleep here, eat here, and work here," my new boss at the time said, which was just fine by me; I was happy to have a job, and this seemed like a plum job, as they went. Besides, employment for guys with just as much brains as brawn and a big mouth to prove it were few and far between at the time. Room and board included was a benefit.
Until I met the board.
"What is it?" I asked, like the perishing neophyte I was. Wolfe said something in French, or what I assumed was French, and went back to eating. For all I know he could have just told me it was fried rat. I found out later it was squab, which isn't always any more reassuring, given the pigeons in New York. He stopped eating and looked at me again.
"Eat it," he said.
"You know there's a deli down the street -- "
"Eat it, or Fritz will be insulted," he insisted. What was he, my pop?
Still, I wasn't about to get thrown out of the first steady job in weeks, so I picked up a knife and cut off a little sliver and ate it. I didn't even realise he was watching me until he gave me a weird little smile.
"Good?" he asked.
I was too busy eating to reply.
The Sitting: Augustus Caesar
"How much longer must I sit here?" Augustus asked, and the sculptor shook his head.
"Just a little longer, your eminence," the artist answered, working his hammer and chisel quickly. "The nose is entirely the wrong shape."
"Well, we can't have that," Augustus grumbled. "I have a city to rule, though, you know that, don't you?"
The sculptor was silent, except for the almost metallic noise of chisel on marble. Finally he spoke.
"Sir, when you die, gods forbid, and are immortalised as the rule of all the world, what will you leave behind you?"
"Rome," Augustus answered. "And my children."
"And your name on the buidings of the Forum, sir," the sculptor said.
"Yes. So? Less talk, more carving."
"When I die, sir, your humble servant, I will leave behind you."
Augustus was suddenly still, even down to his formerly fidgeting fingers.
"Me?"
"Yes sir. When men speak of the glory of Augustus Caesar, divi filium, two thousand years from now, they will speak of your accomplishments, sir. But they will look at my sculpture."
Augustus was silent for the rest of the sitting, unmoving except for the occasional dart of his eyes away from the target the sculptor had specified, following the quick, precise movements of the chisel.
The Meal: Emperor Vespasian
He really wasn't cut out for this.
He wasn't an imperial patrician, he wasn't much of a politician to start with, he was just a soldier who happened to have a head for management.
Why?
Why on earth had he wanted to be Emperor?
Vespasian bent over the new reports coming in from across the vast conglomeration of fractious, childish tribes known as the Roman Empire, the familiar anxiety of rule clenching his insides.
A servant appeared and quietly placed a plate of food at his elbow. Servants were nice, but one didn't have to be an Emperor to have servants. Good food was nice, but again...
He turned to regard the plate, idly. A few slices of cheese, some fresh bread, and fruit; figs and berries besides.
The figs were from an eastern province, the cheese a recipe from Gaul; the berries were local, but the bread was a much-improved version they'd picked up in Germania.
Suddenly he laughed. This was why; this was Rome. Not one thing, but many things in one, making it more than the sum of its parts. He wanted to be remembered as a man who had been one of those parts.
The servants, sweeping the corridor outside Vespasian's study, smiled to hear him laugh.
Blind: Daredevil/Spiderman
The thing is, he's blind.
Some people know it and some people don't but nobody at all seems to grasp the significance of it, which is that he knows. He gets around in both worlds, and he's learned to recognise the others by their voices, so when he's introduced to them as someone else and they say hello...well, nobody bothers to hide their voice like they do their bodies -- like he does, under suits and dark glasses.
Matt lives in a pure world, and nobody can hide from him there. They travel in much the same circles, after all; some of them are reporters who've covered his cases or friends, family of politicians. Bruce Wayne hired him once, for god's sake. He knows who Mr. Wayne, Mr. Kent, Mr. Parker are. He knows who Ms. Gordon is.
But he hasn't told anyone, because he figures, well, it's like client privilege. Not that they're actually paying him -- except Mr. Wayne, briefly -- but he's kept other secrets before, and will again, and it's a breach of trust, isn't it.
Peter knows who he is now, too, which is sort of a relief, because it means he doesn't have to be careful with Peter. A double-trust. And that leads to fellowship, and that leads to private thoughts that he would never let past his lips except that one night, some nights, Peter goes a little wild. Everyone does, with the not-telling, and Peter comes to Matt and says how do you handle it?
And Matt says he thinks about trust, about not betraying the trust, and he makes some lame joke about the heroism that dare not speak its name.
And there's this little choke from Peter, he wouldn't hear it if he wasn't so used to listening. He wonders how he can ever have thought Peter and Spider-man were similar, because Peter, the real Peter, sounds nothing like the man who climbs walls and saves damsels in distress. Matt knows what it means, that little choking noise, because he made it himself a while ago when he figured out a few things about life and love and sex.
He drowns in sensation when they touch the first time and he's still drowning hours later while Peter sleeps, head pillowed on Matt's shoulder, hand on his chest. Matt takes the secret and folds it up into a little box like origami, and tucks it deep down with the other secrets, only a little more raw around the edges.
Matt's used to keeping secrets, and he's finally found one he likes.
Warnings: None.
Petulant: Sherlock Holmes
Holmes had deft fingers, but not pretty ones; they were callused from the violin, burned from chemical experiments, and scarred from various small injuries suffered in the name of science. Watson knew them better than he knew his own; for a man who could staunchly take a bullet, rub shoulders with the wretched in opium dens, and prizefight with professionals, Holmes was oddly childish about nicks and scratches.
"My hands and eyes are the tools of my mind; without either I should starve, I imagine," he said, as Watson applied salve and a bandage to a badly-burnt finger. The doctor smiled.
"I am sure you would find a way to work one-handed," he said, and Holmes gave an unusually expressive shudder. "Have I hurt you?"
"No. You are always gentle," Holmes answered. Watson smiled, and raised the tip of the burnt finger to his lips, kissing it lightly.
"And you are petulant," he replied.
"Only because I reap such fine rewards from it," Holmes murmured.
Paint the World: Shakespeare
(Pardon the liberties taken with the language.)
"Aren't you tired of it?"
"Tired of what?" William asked, laying down his quill.
"This. Slinging ink to page. Don't you want to be out in the world? Sometimes, if I spend another minute on that stage..."
William smiled. "I'm nearly sixty. I prefer a warm room, an endless supply of paper."
"To match your endless ideas."
"To fill with words," William said kindly. "I don't need the world. I paint my world with words."
He tapped the line he'd just penned. "As you from crimes would pardon'd be, let your indulgence set me free."
"I like that."
"As do I."
Because: Hamlet
Horatio was a well bred young man of Danish royalty, and would never have dreamed of interfering in his friend's affairs without being invited.
If he thought Hamlet, even before his father's death, was circling madness with his courting of Ophelia, who showed her true feelings one minute and her father's reserve the next, he never spoke of it to Hamlet. He hated Ophelia, without really knowing why at first; he hated the way she possessed his friend, not just that she had him but that she occupied his thoughts even when absent.
"Don't you like her even a little?" Hamlet asked him, and since he had been asked, Horatio could answer.
"Not even a nutshell's worth," he replied.
"Why not?"
And Horatio had been waiting for that question above all others. Because he would speak if asked, and otherwise would be silent, and Hamlet had asked him.
"Because I love you," he said simply, and kissed Hamlet.
Eat: Nero Wolfe
"You will sleep here, eat here, and work here," my new boss at the time said, which was just fine by me; I was happy to have a job, and this seemed like a plum job, as they went. Besides, employment for guys with just as much brains as brawn and a big mouth to prove it were few and far between at the time. Room and board included was a benefit.
Until I met the board.
"What is it?" I asked, like the perishing neophyte I was. Wolfe said something in French, or what I assumed was French, and went back to eating. For all I know he could have just told me it was fried rat. I found out later it was squab, which isn't always any more reassuring, given the pigeons in New York. He stopped eating and looked at me again.
"Eat it," he said.
"You know there's a deli down the street -- "
"Eat it, or Fritz will be insulted," he insisted. What was he, my pop?
Still, I wasn't about to get thrown out of the first steady job in weeks, so I picked up a knife and cut off a little sliver and ate it. I didn't even realise he was watching me until he gave me a weird little smile.
"Good?" he asked.
I was too busy eating to reply.
The Sitting: Augustus Caesar
"How much longer must I sit here?" Augustus asked, and the sculptor shook his head.
"Just a little longer, your eminence," the artist answered, working his hammer and chisel quickly. "The nose is entirely the wrong shape."
"Well, we can't have that," Augustus grumbled. "I have a city to rule, though, you know that, don't you?"
The sculptor was silent, except for the almost metallic noise of chisel on marble. Finally he spoke.
"Sir, when you die, gods forbid, and are immortalised as the rule of all the world, what will you leave behind you?"
"Rome," Augustus answered. "And my children."
"And your name on the buidings of the Forum, sir," the sculptor said.
"Yes. So? Less talk, more carving."
"When I die, sir, your humble servant, I will leave behind you."
Augustus was suddenly still, even down to his formerly fidgeting fingers.
"Me?"
"Yes sir. When men speak of the glory of Augustus Caesar, divi filium, two thousand years from now, they will speak of your accomplishments, sir. But they will look at my sculpture."
Augustus was silent for the rest of the sitting, unmoving except for the occasional dart of his eyes away from the target the sculptor had specified, following the quick, precise movements of the chisel.
The Meal: Emperor Vespasian
He really wasn't cut out for this.
He wasn't an imperial patrician, he wasn't much of a politician to start with, he was just a soldier who happened to have a head for management.
Why?
Why on earth had he wanted to be Emperor?
Vespasian bent over the new reports coming in from across the vast conglomeration of fractious, childish tribes known as the Roman Empire, the familiar anxiety of rule clenching his insides.
A servant appeared and quietly placed a plate of food at his elbow. Servants were nice, but one didn't have to be an Emperor to have servants. Good food was nice, but again...
He turned to regard the plate, idly. A few slices of cheese, some fresh bread, and fruit; figs and berries besides.
The figs were from an eastern province, the cheese a recipe from Gaul; the berries were local, but the bread was a much-improved version they'd picked up in Germania.
Suddenly he laughed. This was why; this was Rome. Not one thing, but many things in one, making it more than the sum of its parts. He wanted to be remembered as a man who had been one of those parts.
The servants, sweeping the corridor outside Vespasian's study, smiled to hear him laugh.
Blind: Daredevil/Spiderman
The thing is, he's blind.
Some people know it and some people don't but nobody at all seems to grasp the significance of it, which is that he knows. He gets around in both worlds, and he's learned to recognise the others by their voices, so when he's introduced to them as someone else and they say hello...well, nobody bothers to hide their voice like they do their bodies -- like he does, under suits and dark glasses.
Matt lives in a pure world, and nobody can hide from him there. They travel in much the same circles, after all; some of them are reporters who've covered his cases or friends, family of politicians. Bruce Wayne hired him once, for god's sake. He knows who Mr. Wayne, Mr. Kent, Mr. Parker are. He knows who Ms. Gordon is.
But he hasn't told anyone, because he figures, well, it's like client privilege. Not that they're actually paying him -- except Mr. Wayne, briefly -- but he's kept other secrets before, and will again, and it's a breach of trust, isn't it.
Peter knows who he is now, too, which is sort of a relief, because it means he doesn't have to be careful with Peter. A double-trust. And that leads to fellowship, and that leads to private thoughts that he would never let past his lips except that one night, some nights, Peter goes a little wild. Everyone does, with the not-telling, and Peter comes to Matt and says how do you handle it?
And Matt says he thinks about trust, about not betraying the trust, and he makes some lame joke about the heroism that dare not speak its name.
And there's this little choke from Peter, he wouldn't hear it if he wasn't so used to listening. He wonders how he can ever have thought Peter and Spider-man were similar, because Peter, the real Peter, sounds nothing like the man who climbs walls and saves damsels in distress. Matt knows what it means, that little choking noise, because he made it himself a while ago when he figured out a few things about life and love and sex.
He drowns in sensation when they touch the first time and he's still drowning hours later while Peter sleeps, head pillowed on Matt's shoulder, hand on his chest. Matt takes the secret and folds it up into a little box like origami, and tucks it deep down with the other secrets, only a little more raw around the edges.
Matt's used to keeping secrets, and he's finally found one he likes.
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And the daredevil spiderman- sigh. And yes also.
Sorry half asleep- but most appriciated thing these are. :D
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I'm awful at leaving feedback, but it sounds like Rex Stout wrote it. I can see it being part of a theoretical first book, where the routine in the orchid rooms isn't fixed, and the second desk isn't already in the study.
Also - Hamlet slash is awesome!
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i love your holmes. he's sweet.
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