Archive | July 2011

Kissing One’self

Jul31

kink_bingo – I-2 – Mirrors and Doubles – from my card. As this is a kink bingo story, it is smutty, and it involves doppelgangers and clones.

I like this, but honestly feel I could do more with the theme.

Author’s notes: this takes place soon after this story (on LJ) where the Team has just found themselves facing dopples of two team members, Josie and Alexa.
💋
Cole lay in bed between Alexa and Alexa, near Alexa… and Cole. His doppleganger was smoking a cigarette; Cole reached over and took it from him, leaning over what he was pretty sure was a clone-Alexa to do so.

“Well,” he grinned, “this is the most fun I’ve had today.”

Clone or not, the Alexa he was leaning over hit him.

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They’d encountered doppleganger!Josie (who was very, very clear on the fact that she was not a clone) and clone!Alexa (who had no such problem) first, just steps into this new world. The Josies had still been trying to work out who got to freak out first when doppleganger!Cole (probably also a clone) had come around the corner, with what looked like a third twin of their opener.

Cole had had a bad moment there – the two Josies and the three Alexas seemed rather similar in personality to each other, and he knew exactly what he was capable of, especially when dirty, tired, and confronted with an unpredictable situation. He really didn’t want to have to shoot himself in the face – almost as much as he really, really didn’t want to find out that his doppleganger was faster on the draw than him.

But doppleganger!Cole had taken them all in, grinned, and said “where the hell did you clones come from, and, wherever it was, tell me you brought booze, cigs, and a shower.”

He’d almost dodged his Josie slapping him, too, still declaring that she, of all of them, most definitely wasn’t a clone.

The ice had been broken enough, though, that they’d been invited back to their dopple’s HQ, the basement of an old Zear’s store, complete with a couple creepy mannequins and, much nicer, half of the housewares department. There were twenty of them there, all ragged and dirty and all very glad of the supplies in their visitors’ packs. Aerich had been cranky, Xenia and Peter distrustful – but their dopples weren’t there, and, to be fair, they didn’t know their teammates that well, much less their teammates’ duplicates. Josie had managed to calm herself down, and the three Alexas had compared notes over the fresh apples his Lex had thought to bring.

That left it up to Coles to suggest the inevitable.

His dopple started it, with a raised eyebrow and a head-tilt at the two cloned Alexas. “They’re a riot in the sack together,” he murmured, which got him hit by the cleaner and more in-charge of the two. “But I have to admit…”

And his Lex finished it. “…I’ve always wondered what being in bed with two Coles would be like,” she grinned sharply, the kind of thing that looked sweet until you saw all the teeth she was showing. She turned to the clearly-junior dopple-clone. “Got a bed big enough for three?”

No one should have been surprised when someone with Lex’s genes shot right back at her with “I’ve got one big enough for five.”

And, while the rest of the team might role their eyes, truth was they weren’t going anywhere until Lex decided to open a Door, so might as well enjoy themselves for a bit, right? And Cole had earned them goodwill in more than one place with what Peter liked to call “his own particular brand of Cowboy Diplomacy.”

So Cole found himself kissing himself (he tasted like salt and Josie’s homebrew), while Lex went down on one of them, then the other and the other two did a mirror act that was illegal in several states but delicious in any world. Naked, they lost the few distinctions of clothing, and in the dim light, the lifestyle differences he’d seen – his Lex had a couple pounds on her dopples, and the junior clone had a sepia tattoo over her left hip – faded, leaving them identical brown writhing bodies. He grabbed for a head of hair, not caring which it was, and kissed the girl, then kissed himself again.

All three Alexas bit, but they all had their own unique moans and cries and, more surprisingly, their own tastes under his tongue. He looked up to see dark eyes staring down at him, or felt nails in his hair, and only when the girl there called him by one of Alexa’s naughty nicknames for him (“Coal shoot” was her favorite and least sensical) did he know which girl he was licking.

Of course, when he twisted to find dopple!Cole lining up for his, ahem, coal shoot, he knew exactly who was who, but it was still unnerving to see that leer looking down at him.
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Some time later, he reached over and stole his dopple’s cig, earning himself an elbow from one of several lovely Alexas. “I could get used to this,” he groaned.

“Me, too,” he heard himself agree. “So, are you leaving yours, or taking mine and me?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/92859.html. You can comment here or there.

DailyPrompt: Promising Shangri-La

Jul28

From [community profile] dailyprompt: ‘I will return to Shangri-La,’ with a side order of “elation and heartbreak.”

Of the same world as these two strange tales:
Moving In
Dancing for Joy

“I will return to Shangri-La.”

It is said that the last settler to leave the ruined alien city declared that as he left, staring back in defiance at the desolation that had destroyed so many of them. It became a war cry of sorts, Talbot’s Promise. Tal’s Cry. “I will return.” We will survive; we will rebuild.

They found places on the blasted planet that were, at the very least, less inhospitable, places where the ground itself did not try to destroy them, cities that had been abandoned for longer, or with less gruesome reminders, at least, than those in the city they had named Shangri-La. Nowhere did they find a place free of the hand of the former residents, but there were places more bearable.

A generation built, planted, harvested, married and bore and buried, saying to each other, with every elation and every heartbreak, that they would return to Shangri-La. They would get theirs back on the city that had so very nearly destroyed them. This place would do, for now. But they would return. They spoke of Talbot’s Promise – and plotted.

Their children made the alien settlement their own, reshaping the buildings to fit their bodies, working the earth until it gave up fruit that was both edible and palatable. They married and celebrated, mourned and moved on, and their numbers grew.

They explored, just a little out at first, and then further, learning as they did that, not only were they not the first sentient species on this planet, it was unlikely they were even the tenth or twentieth. Those who had studied the science their parents could remember postulated that the planet was the interstellar version of an island on a trade route (concepts learned from their parents as well, as this place had neither). Those who were merely poets suggested that it was a bear trap (the planet did, however, have something that could pass muster as a bear). Astronomy flourished, and the engineering that would be needed to build a return ship, should they ever manage the infrastructure.

They spoke of Talbot’s Promise, the children born here. They would return to Shangri-La. They would defeat the city that had killed nine-tenths of their number. They would win, and then they would leave this place. They spoke of Talbot’s Cry – and they built their own city taller.

Their children, in turn, grew up thinking of the spaceways as a fairy tale, and Shangri-La a long-forgotten place. They expanded, and grew, married and danced and gave birth, and stretched the land out further, learning more and more about those who had been here before. Xeno-archeology flourished, and botany, and crisis architecture, for the planet still had its share of ways to fight them.

They looked to the north, sometimes, where they had been told their grandparents came from, and thought of Talbot’s Cry as a sort of metaphor. “I will return to Shangri-La,” their poets said, told the story of mankind’s fall from grace, and their determination to succeed. They spoke of Talbot’s Myth, and they lived.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/90831.html. You can comment here or there.