magic_fratboy

NOTE: Takes place early in Tommy and Zee's relationship, shortly after the occurrence of this piece.

“I love you.”

“Love you, too, babe.”

“…I really do, you know.”

Ziyah’s insistence caused him to stop boning the chicken in front of him and look up, where she was leaning over the counterspace separating the kitchen from the dining area with her chin in her hand as she watched him cook.

“What brought this on?” he asked with a tilt of his head, reaching for a paper towel to wipe his hands.

She shrugged, sultry lips forming a thoughtful pout, too thoughtful for her casual pose and the quiet, easy domesticity of the evening. “I don’t know…I was just thinking about how we met.”

“That forum where you were goin’ on about how no man could chain you down?”

“Yeah, that. When I was still with Dio.”

( “I remember it, yeah. What about it?” )

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 470
Partner: Ziyah Ambrogio (zee_ali) [Highlander OC]

He knew the first time he went to draw her.

In the days before they realized their attraction, when he would awake intermittently to find her tangled in his sheets, he lay watching her body half-bare to his gaze and fought the urge. Soon it became a compulsion, driving him from his bed and into the guest room where he kept his drawing supplies.

He knew when the lines came with ease, dark slow strokes and lighter lines that captured the lean planes of her stomach and thighs. Sharp angles for her hips and features, careful shading to create the fullness of her lower lip and the soft fall of her hair against her cheek…it was a magic he’d never touched before.

He was half done with the sketch when it occurred to him that she was still in the other room, that he was capturing the essence of this woman from memory.

Even when he slipped back in to finish the sketch, he rarely looked up at her to get the pose he wanted. Details and feelings danced through his head and heart, teasing and tormenting him as he struggled to create a perfect representation of that boundless energy in repose. It was easier to pull the lines from his memory because they were more readily available to him than they were to his eyes.

Without his being aware of it, Ziyah had begun haunting his thoughts. Her face, her body, her essence…he had memorized them without even realizing it. She was so close he could smell her, taste her, so near that he could feel her even when they were apart.

He knew he had to be in love with her when he realized that he could draw her better with closed eyes than he could with them open.

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 301
Partner: Ziyah Ambrogio (zee_ali) [Highlander OC]

"Show me a character whose life arouses my curiosity, and my flesh begins crawling with suspense."

NOTE: Though history does dictate that Houdini first met his wife when she was singing the song "Rosabelle," I'm taking a few artistic liberties with pretty much everything else surrounding the event.

( He loved her because she excited him, and she excited him because he was terribly curious about her... )

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 413

NOTE: Takes place shortly after Zee and Tommy's first kiss.

“I’m not even kidding. If you try to hold my hand? I’ll slug you.”

She was smiling when she said it, but there was a weight to her voice that told him she wasn’t kidding as they walked away from the coffee shop where they’d just had lunch. She was capable of being impossibly scary that way most of the time, and yet Tommy was as drawn to it as he was repelled.

Not that it revolted him, it was just…strange to him. The only softness she had shown him so far was in her lips and skin, even the eye-catching curves of her body that tortured his thoughts were sharp and solid. Her body was athletic and strong, and overwhelmingly female.

He was more than aware of how little softness there truly was in real women.

Tommy feared that rough touch, the violence and vitriol in her. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t fathom where it came from or how she still managed to be so radiant in spite of it…

Tommy reached out and took her hand. The movement stopped her dead in her tracks.

They stood there for years crammed into seconds, eyes locked. She glared at him in shock, steady and prepared to strike…but she felt it, too, he could see it in her eyes. The warmth of skin on skin, the solidity of that grip as her fingers curled into his on reflex alone. The soft sweep of his thumb over her knuckles, caressing…

His cheeks were a little red, but there was an overwhelming sense of confidence in that moment. He smirked, actually smirked at her…dared her without words to make good on her threat.

He held her hand, touched her essence, her energy…oh yeah, that was soft, too. Soft and so very strong…

As her shock and annoyance melted into something else, something more vulnerable and almost confused, he felt like he’d won something. It was a prize, an award…it was a plunge into something deep and limitless, a balancing act he was doing on a ledge he was destined to fall from.

Licking his lips nervously, he smiled and tightened his fingers around hers, lacing them together as he pulled her just a little closer and started walking again.

She didn’t make him let go of her hand as they walked back to his apartment building.

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 394
Partner: Ziyah Ambrogio (zee_ali) [deceased]

-Black Saber Studios, July 8, 2008-

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

Tommy just grinned as Jelly beamed and held the sheet of notebook paper even higher, turning this way and that for optimum visibility. “Then maybe somebody should have remembered my good morning hug, you big barefoot galloot.”

Laughing, Tommy took another bite of his chicken salad, shaking his head. “Crazy. Ben was right, you got issues and I got a front-row seat.”

Jelly just beamed, knowing that she was amusing the hell out of him. True, Jelly Lang was more than a little adorable, but the ‘Free Hugs’ sign she’d made and was now displaying prominently in the break room was a little corny even for her. Usually he did just that, stopped by her office to say hello in the morning and got tackled by the tiny girl for a hug, but he’d been late that morning.

And when he’d refused to buy her lunch to make up for it, she started making a federal case out of it just to give him a hard time.

Jelly took that moment to leap out of her seat and fling herself at their co-worker, Todd, hugging the stuffing out of him before she sat down again. When she did, he pointed at her with his fork.

“Okay, how ‘bout we compromise?” Tommy suggested with a grin. “I’ll buy you dinner, and you hug me now, settle the score, and stop trying to whore yourself out to every man, woman, and androgynous she-male in the office. How’s that?”

“Gee, love you too, Karras!”

Grinning at Giselle across the break room, who had gotten her hair done in a pixie cut the week before, Tommy turned back to Jelly with a questioning raised eyebrow.

Jelly considered her options for a moment, then tossed her handmade sign aside and bounced around the table to fling her arms around him. “Deal…but I want McDonalds!”

“Ooh, the big spender…McDonalds it is.” He laughed, hugging her back. It wasn’t all bad, having a fallout over hugs be the most bothersome part of his day, especially when it ended with a dinner date with his best friend.

Life was a little mundane…but if he never had one exciting thing happen to him, just days like this…he could do mundane.

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 385

NOTE: Takes place about three weeks before Tommy starts becoming aware of his abilities.

“You’re aware this is insane, right? Not part of the dare or anything.”

Tommy swallowed hard, then nodded as he toed off his shoes and stripped off his shirt. “Yeah, I know...but you never said I couldn’t up the stakes on my own.”

“Just...are you sure about this?”

Totally unsure, Tommy nodded and tossed his t-shirt aside, hands moving to his belt buckle and working it free. “Yeah. So you got the stuff or what?”

( Naked Dares and Houdini... )

Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 495