lookslikelove | [meme| the cross-a-drabble meme]

Title: The Magician's Assistant
Fandom/Fandom: Harry Potter/Coraline
Pairing: George Weasley/Coraline Jones
Rating: 15
Notes: After leaving school and after the war Coraline gets pulled into one of George's new endeavours after losing a bet to her least favourite Gryffindor. Now the pair are travelling the country with a Muggle circus performing as a 'Magical Act' with George pretending to be a Muggle magician and Coraline portraying the ever so lovely Magician's assistant. What could go wrong?
-

“Do you have to be here?” Coraline asked, lifting her arms up and glancing at George the Pervert, George the Idiot, George the wonderfu-Wanker! Coraline covered her chest self consciously and tried to tug down the outfit as the older woman slapped her hands away. “Shouldn’t you be off doing... I don’t know polishing your wand or something?”

“You offering to polish my wand Jones?” George asked grinning wickedly at her as the former Ravenclaw turned bright red. With Cora dressed to kill like that no one would be watching him or his hands. Really, Cora was the perfect assistant.

A new city. A new start.

That had been the plan. The life of Meredith Grey had never gone according to plan. From a post-it wedding that went nowhere fast and a hellish set of days during her residency she more than jumped at the chance to do her fellowship any place other than Seattle.

The hospital is different. A different color scheme, all open plan and water features, windows and doors that separate one area from another. It’s so new that she nearly loses herself both literally and figuratively on during her orientation. Badge in hand, paperwork filed in HR and she heads to the place that she’s been told is a staff favorite. An evening amongst strangers with a bit of tequila has never served her wrong and it is a happier prospect than unpacked boxes and cold pizza.

Sitting on a stool, she flags down the bartender and orders a double of tequila, any type, hold the ice.

Looking down at the tumbler in her hand, she pushes it back and forth gently between her palms. It’s a gold tequila and she can name all of the things that drinking it will do to her body, to her mind and at that moment she doesn’t care.

A folded newspaper is slammed onto the bar with enough force to shake her from her thoughts and she turns to see who it belongs to. There’s a man, all dark hair and smile lines around his eyes pulling his coat off as he settles into the stool next to her.

He catches her watching him and smiles, relaxed and friendly. Years ago it was a smile that Derek used as an opener in a bar not too different from this one, but where Derek’s smile was charming with a bit of knowingness, this man has a smile that is just friendly nothing more.

“Sorry about that,” he apologises before reaching forward to pull the paper towards him and stick it into the pocket of his coat. She catches a glance of the banner, but she hasn’t had the time to learn what makes the Sun Times different from the Tribune.

“It’s no problem,” she dismisses with a smile, watching him as he reaches over the bar to pull a beer from the ice on the other side. Catching sight of her questioning glance as he sits down on the stool, he shrugs.

“It’s my bar,” he explains, pointing to one of the pictures lining the wall. Sure enough this man is featured in more than a few of them suggesting that there is some truth to what he’s told her.

“You looked like you were thinking pretty hard,” he notes and Meredith studies his face. It’s familiar like she’s seen it somewhere before but without context the recognition is meaningless.

She shrugs, smiling down at her drink before picking it up and taking a sip. It burns in a way that feels like home. “Not about anything important. Tomorrow’s my first day,” she shares, taking comfort in the scene.

“Is it? Well, good luck then. Can I ask what it’s your first day of?” He was peeling the label off his beer, scraping away at it with his thumbnail and it feels vaguely intrusive to be watching someone’s hands like she is. But she’s a surgeon and hands are important. Hands say a lot about who someone is.

“My fellowship. I’m a surgeon, a brain surgeon or I will be starting tomorrow.”

Bottle to his lips, he raises his eyebrows in recognition of an accomplishment. Setting the bottle back down, he slides it over to clink it against the side of her glass.

“Congratulations, Doctor…?”

“Grey. Meredith Grey.”

“Doctor Grey. I’m Gary Hobson and I hope that you have a good first day.”

She laughs and ducks her head slightly to hide the blush that she doesn’t mean to happen. This man is nice, friendly in an attentive sort of way and it doesn’t hurt that he owns the place that she’s drinking at.

“This is a nice bar,” she says as way of reciprocation which elicits a laugh in response.

“I suppose it is. You should feel free to drink here often. Not just because I like repeat customers, but because it seems like you need a place, Doctor Grey. Maybe this can be your place.”

“Meredith,” she corrects, a laugh in her voice as she takes another sip. “Call me Meredith.”

“Alright, but only if you call me Gary.”

“I can do that.”

And that’s it. She can still be the girl in the bar, but the guy has changed.

Things are starting over, but it feels like it might be home. Maybe. Tomorrow is a different story.

YOU

HAVE DRASTICALLY IMPROVED MY DAY.

agahjaskakjsha I am all girly squeals and extreme happiness, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I can totally hear them both and now I have this crazy nostalgia craving for Early Edition and oh my god, you made it so beautifully plausible.

I AM PLEASED THAT I COULD DO THAT. I definitely put way more thought into this than is probably healthy. Oh my life, you are madness.

They say that just before you die, you see your life flash before your eyes. Imagine that. Imagine every single god awful decision that you’ve ever made just whisking by to remind you how much you fucked your life up. That doctor you should never have gone home with, those pair of panties you should have never left, the patient that you could have saved... I wish I’d had that. I wish I’d had that chance but just my luck I got the pain instead.

No one tells you about the pain. No one tells you about the agony. No, they tell you about bright lights and tunnels and feeling at peace and seeing your life flash before your eyes. They don’t tell you about the pain. Well, maybe Cristina would tell me about the pain but George? No, George would sugar coat it all the way until I was thinking about cute little cupids and big pearly gates. If I’d known about the pain I would’ve asked for morphine, stat.

Still, if I’d known I was going to get murdered by a vampire I doubt I would’ve left the house this morning. Or come to this city, I mean it’s not something they like to advertise. Come to Seattle, see the sights, have some lunch and hey, how about you be lunch? No, they sure missed that out of the brochure. Maybe next time I’ll remember not to take candy from strangers or help fifteen year old girls out when they look like they’re in trouble. Not that I get a next time. No do-overs for me.

Except if that was the case how am I still monologuing?

“Meredith, why are you in the morgue?”

George. Oh, God, George I’m sorry. But I’m just so damn thirsty.

“Mere? Mere-aaaah.....”

Eliot's jaw is set so hard she thinks his teeth will break, but eventually the words are forced out, half growled. "Did you shoot me?"

"Of course not, I was a foot behind you." Bela sounds just a bit frustrated, but it bothers her, it really bothers her that he'd ask her that seriously. "What did I tell you when we first met?"

Despite his bleeding, angry shoulder, she can see Eliot huff out a laugh. "That if you got mad at me, you'd come at me from the front. And I'd be armed."

"Exactly." She calms down. He remembered.

OMG I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS. INSPIRED.

There is not enough Bela in the world and I never would have thought of pairing her with Eliot but YES.

what is this even

Everything dies.

So is the human way.

Mitchell isn't human, but when time takes the people he loves, when time takes George, Annie too eventually, he wishes he could be. That he could have an end to go with his start and see them on the other side to bookend it all.

But Mitchell lives. For lack of a better word, he lives and he moves on.

In the distance, Texas waits.

In the distance, a girl whose going to stay a girl forever rises with the moon and goes down with the sun.

-

The first meeting -

it's a bar, and she is saying something that the short blonde beside her finds worthy of laughter.

They laugh, her and this other woman, giggle really, and from where he stands, he can hear the blonde's pulse, the thud of that beat under her skin, the blood pulsating wet and warm beneath.

When he moves his gaze, red red hair and a smile that splits too easily (splits like Annie's smiles used to, did), there is no similar sound. No beat of tell tale life. No blood, pushing hard and fast inside veins and arteries alike.

There is silence. The hollow nature that comes with that and little more.

Jessica smiles. Mitchell watches her lips curl around her teeth, imagines the fangs for himself.

Later, they will spring into view.

Later, he'll feel them against his mouth and she will feel his against hers in turn, a sigh breaking between them.

But for now, there is a booth.

She hands him a bottle, the label eliciting a chuckle in the process and her fingers itch promptly on the sound. She holds them still under the table.

"True Blood, huh?"

Her expression slants for coy, "That's what it says."

He grimaces with the first sip. A little less with the second.

Her lips spin on amusement for both.

-

They trade stories by a fireplace that goes unlit.

Her voice goes low with the name Hoyt, and he almost asks. For details, what happened and why, but that would open the door for her to do the same and as much as he likes her, likes the way she reminds him of people who aren't with him now, they're not quite there yet.

The thing about Jessica though is that she's not too concerned with keeping score. Never was.

She tells him everything. She tells him things about herself like she's talking about someone else. With animation and detachment and an eerie sense of calm that is only compromised when her head bows her face from his steady gaze, a shaky breath expelled.

"Sometimes," she says, "I forget. I wish it happened more often."

Her hand turns tight in his wrist. He almost fastens his fingers a little closer at that.

Sometimes, she said, and he didn't have to ask what she meant.

They were once human. It's not suprising that those memories still spill down from where they sit stored in their minds and they lose themselves.

They forget. Moments, here and there. What they are now, what they were then, and how one can't ever go back, but only forward.

He always remembers when he tries to snake a breath in he doesn't really need.

With her, it's the catch of her wrist against another, the warmth there. How it doesn't translate to her own flesh and never will again.

Silent, he pushes back her hair from her face. Lets her forehead hold easy in the space below his chin.

There, she breathes. Closes her eyes in the dark, and waits.

Together, they forget.

-

sadkjghajkfgahfga

MAY. I WAS JUST WRITING A TRUE BLOOD/BEING HUMAN CROSSOVER. OUR MINDS WHAT IS THIS.

But YES. It's so pretty and I don't know. It is kind of sad and kind of sadly perfect. JUST GAH.

DUUUUUUUUUUDE. I now want for nothing else than fic for these two and it does not hurt that I shipped the hell out of her and McBombSquad guy, haha.

This is fantastic. I LOVE I LOVE.

LIKE STARS ALIGNED, YOU AND ME. I'm so stoked for yours, girl.

Muchas gracias. It def did not go where I was trying to make it go, but I am happy it worked for you ♥.

I said once that this should exist and damn I do not care that I had to make it so. Because Meredith and McBombSquad guy would have been fabulous. Had he not blown up.

:D

A summer romance.

It's on her list, number nine in fact. Of things Annie Edison needs to her before she dies.

Maybe she's seen Grease too many times, maybe she hasn't.

Maybe she identifies too much with Sandy Olsson, maybe she doesn't.

Either way, it's on the list and when she goes to an art show, meets the featured artist and tells him in a voice that spells nothing, but genuine, how much she loves his pieces, it's not what she's expecting.

Matt takes her hand, shakes it with firm, but soft fingers and thanks her.

It's the fact that his words betray the same sincerity that held her own together that makes her think maybe.

He takes her hand to let go of it. She quietly excuses herself to turn back into the crowd, shaking away the thought as she goes.

When he finds her afterwards, fingers pitched into the road for a taxi, he's all nerves and smiles that don't quite finish.

Annie thinks maybe again. Tries to hold onto the possibility and runs her fingers over a blushing face that matches his own.

Two weeks later, she'll cross number nine off the list, his laugh skimming past her throat as she does.

The pen clatters to the floor first.

All the same. They won't remember hearing it.

My knowledge of Leverage is limited, but Bela! I love how much you've captured of her in this.

Oh man. That would be too cute to function. It's just...awwh.

LIKE KITTENS. My crossover OTP for these two shows is actually Annie and Riggins? Yeah. I'll just let that one stay in my head lol.

That would be kind of awesome, NGL. He would be all secretly gooey and she'd try to be all hardcore. Sweetness.

He is not the gentleman people think he is.

She is not the good girl she used to be.

They fight. They have always fought. Loud and angry, over things that don’t matter and those that do. Things get thrown and threats get made. He calls her an intolerable wretch and makes suggestions about her parentage and her brother’s affections for certain farm animals. She spews venom at him, suggesting that he is poorly endowed and other insults to his personage and personality.

All their fights end the same way. Most of them anyways. He asks what she wants or she wonders aloud by she bothers and before any more thoughts can be had his mouth is on hers, hands are everywhere. Tugging, pulling, tearing at clothes and hair in a way that is not gentle, not poetic or kind, but is its own sort of loving.

The quiet comes afterwards. He holds her, presses her against his bare chest and she can hear his heartbeat. It’s the sort of domesticity that only exists with their eyes closed (secretly he opens and observes the fall of her hair, the curve of her body and freckles that no one else can see; she watches his face for signs of the person he could be).

One leaves first. Rolls away and slides clothes back on before fleeing the scene.

They don’t talk about it. Their words are used as weapons, insults thrown instead of cries of love and affection. It’s easier to put up those barriers and tear them down instead of giving into the fact that maybe they never really existed at all.

If asked he says nothing of her. Dismisses her with a shrug of his shoulders and a change of subject. Talk of another girl, one who may or may not exist but will be his. A brief look betrays what he himself is denying.

She speaks little of him except to suggest that moments in his company are agony. The few who do not understand her intentions take them for truth and share their own dislike only to be met with cold glances and even colder shoulders.

It’s not love. It never will be. It’s a battlefield that neither will ever surrender, no ground will ever be won or loss.

Their own Hundred Years War with a casualty of two and songs that will never be sung. That is how things should be.

I have only just gotten to Bela, but I love Leverage and this works so well in so few words! Marvelous!

Never seen the movie, but whatever I know enough and UM, DEMETRIUS.

This is ten shades of beautiful. All of it really, but this liiiine.

Their own Hundred Years War with a casualty of two and songs that will never be sung

WORDS FAIL, LINA. MY HEART <33.

<3333

I am glad you like it. I am full up on the crack, but you know what? That is totally the reason for this meme. But the world needs more Shakespeare/Other crossovers!

dtshjaah beautiful, oh man. I love it. They'd be adorable.

This would almost be too much adorableness occurring at one time. Their conversations would be a lot of half-finished sentences and Disney eyes.

Oh man, oh man. I am super behind on BH, but I love Mitchell and Jessica's my favorite and I can totally see and hear this.

There is a list.

It is, by necessity, a finite one, but every time Meredith thinks she's completed it, she remembers just one more thing to add. It's a list of the things she left when she left Seattle for Los Angeles. Her mother's ashes, George's grave, a place at the hospital that was her home. Cristina, her career on the rise, and men vying for Lexie's love the way they once fought for hers, the pathetic periodic attempts at reconciliation from her father. The memory of Izzie leaving them, leaving her. The mistakes, the betrayals, the losses. Derek.

The feeling of being threatened, of near-death, of gunfire.

That's one she forgot, one she tried very, very hard to forget, one she underwent therapy again to put behind her, and what she hears first is glass breaking in the front window of a house that she hasn't had long enough to call home before there's the weight of a body on top of hers, pulling her gracelessly to the ground.

And against all logic, against the distant realization that she has, once again, just missed dying, she pushes back. "Get off!"

"Hey," comes the protest, immediate, more offended than concerned, "I don't know if maybe you missed it, but I just saved your life. Stay down."

"They're shooting at me," Meredith says, looking past him and thinking three things almost at the same time, everything too much to process in any rational order: first, that someone tried to shoot her, because it's big damn deal; second, that she's not actually sure how Agent Callen made it from the chair he'd been sitting in to right smack on top of her that fast; third, that having him on top of her isn't so bad. "I didn't see anything, I didn't — I have, at best, at the very most, educated guesses and they are still shooting at me."

"I noticed," he says, and the sound of car wheels squealing off has long since faded, but he's still perched atop her, warm and close. And then he eases back to kneel beside her, holding out a hand, glancing toward the door for his partner, the brunette who went running as soon as the bullets stopped — to see if she could catch a license plate number or whatever it is they do, Meredith guesses. When they came to her house to ask about one of her patients, one of those losses she couldn't help, one that she knows wasn't her fault, she didn't count on everything falling apart so fast. Maybe she should have known better; that's always been her life.

She takes his hand. She sits up and catches her breath, one big inhale, head tipping up as her eyes meet his. "Sorry," she says, defaulting to apologies, then shakes her head, hand still in his. "I mean, thank you. For saving me."

"It's my job." His smile's crooked in a way she can't help liking; she's got a weakness for a hint of arrogance, and he's got that, a confidence that is, despite his age, resolutely boyish. "Can't question you if you're dead."

"Mm," Meredith says, huffing out a laugh with her lips pressed into a smirk. "Chivalry. I like that in a stranger."

"That so? And what about in someone you know a little better?"

"That'd be a first."

"Well, good," he says, leaning forward against his knee. "I like being first."

Her smile hitches up higher on one side, corresponding with the way her head tilts. "Are you hitting on me? I don't think you're allowed to hit on suspects. Witnesses. Whatever I am."

"Every case ends eventually," Callen says, lingering a moment more before he pushes to his feet, pulling her gently up with him. "I'm very good. At solving cases, I mean. Quick. And now I have your number. What d'you say, dinner sometime when this is all over?"

Edited 2010-06-09 07:14 (UTC)

[meme| the cross-a-drabble meme]

Magician's Assistant, Coraline/Harry Potter, George Weasley/Coraline Jones, Rated 15 for innuendo.

a place that feels like home. grey's anatomy/early edition, meredith grey/gary hobson, pg.

Re: a place that feels like home. grey's anatomy/early edition, meredith grey/gary hobson, pg.

Re: a place that feels like home. grey's anatomy/early edition, meredith grey/gary hobson, pg.

Monologues in the Morgue. Grey's Anatomy/Twilight. Meredith, George, Bree. PG also character death.

Honor Amongst Thieves, Bela Talbot/Eliot Spencer (Supernatural/Leverage). Rated PG/T.

Re: Honor Amongst Thieves, Bela Talbot/Eliot Spencer (Supernatural/Leverage). Rated PG/T.

the lamplight where you lie, true blood/being human, jessica/mitchell, pg

Re: the lamplight where you lie, true blood/being human, jessica/mitchell, pg

Re: a place that feels like home. grey's anatomy/early edition, meredith grey/gary hobson, pg.

Re: the lamplight where you lie, true blood/being human, jessica/mitchell, pg

Re: a place that feels like home. grey's anatomy/early edition, meredith grey/gary hobson, pg.

basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

Re: Honor Amongst Thieves, Bela Talbot/Eliot Spencer (Supernatural/Leverage). Rated PG/T.

Re: basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

Re: basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

Re: basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

chinks in fine armor. across the universe/a midsummer night's dream. lucy carrigan/demetrius. pg.

Re: Honor Amongst Thieves, Bela Talbot/Eliot Spencer (Supernatural/Leverage). Rated PG/T.

Re: chinks in fine armor. across the universe/a midsummer night's dream. lucy carrigan/demetrius. pg

Re: chinks in fine armor. across the universe/a midsummer night's dream. lucy carrigan/demetrius. pg

Re: basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

Re: basic space, community/friday night lights, annie edison/matt saracen, pg

Re: the lamplight where you lie, true blood/being human, jessica/mitchell, pg

White Heat, Grey's Anatomy/NCIS: LA, Meredith Grey/G Callen, PG [1/2]