Singing the Body Electric

threesentenceficathon (the ficathon where you leave a prompt and someone writes a three-sentence story for that prompt) has been underway, and I've been having a lot of fun taking part.

So far I've written seven stories:

Mother Panic

Inside Her (Violet Paige/Suditi Varma, rated M, 93 words, note: medical kink, AO3 link)
Prompt: "It's an extraordinary feeling when parts of your body are touched for the first time. I'm thinking of the sensations from sex and surgery." (Jenny Holzer)

No matter who she fucks in whatever penthouse, flophouse, backseat or back alley she does it in, no one will ever touch her the way Suditi has. Hands inside her, head haloed by the operating light, hurting her, fixing her, changing her into something new, something she never wanted to be but needs to be, can't stop being, can't stop—

"Hold still," Suditi says, her voice like surgical steel, and all Violet can do under its demands is let it in and enfold it gladly in the equally insistent heat of her body.


Our Flag Means Death

A Seal at Swim (Frenchie/Izzy Hands, rated T, 122 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: sea life (Or, the one where Izzy sees Frenchie as a seal.)

He's like a seal, that one, or so Izzy finds himself thinking over a drink at Spanish Jackie'z 2 one night, watching Frenchie dazzle a trio of heavy-pursed traders with his tale of finding a map to Blackbeard's lost treasure (a map that, as it happens, Spriggs is still busy drawing behind the bar).

Clumsy fuckers on land, seals, bad enough that you'd think God put them on earth just to have a laugh and give the Catholics a little variety on Fridays.

But put them in their element, Izzy reflects—tracking the graceful movements of Frenchie's hands, the calculated way he leans in toward his marks, the suppressed spark of mirth in his mock-sombre eyes—and they're a beauty to behold.


The Best of Hands (Fang/Izzy Hands, rated T, 90 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: callouses/calloused (Or, the one about Fang's hands.)

Fang's palms are rough as rasps sometimes, as thick as horn in places. They've been tanned by years of saltwater and hard work, made by making and mending, by fighting fierce, by holding fast to a hundred lines in a hundred storms. Izzy shivers in the darkness as his shirt hits the floor of his cabin—as his leg is carefully lifted, the bindings and socket of the wooden limb parted from sore flesh—and lets himself be laid bare, trusting for tonight that he's in the best of hands.


Mermaid (Izzy Hands -> Edward Teach, rated G, 116 words, canonical character death, AO3 link
Prompt: second person future tense (Or, the one where Izzy lives a story he'll never get to hear.)

You will never have a chance to hear the tale of the mermaid who left her home for love unrequited, the mute and soulless wretch for whom every step on land became agony, who gave up her life so that her prince could find happiness with another. All the same, you will know every beat of the story's heart as you speak your last words in Edward's arms.

Leave it to those who'll be allowed other nights of stories upon this ship to tell it properly someday, or to tell it wrong, and to wonder for themselves if there could have been something of worth in such a creature's life besides the giving of it away.


Time Enough (Izzy Hands/Jim Jimenez, rated T, 149 words, )
Prompt: buying you time (Or, the one where Izzy dispatches the remaining members of the Siete Gallos for Jim.)

He knifes Bautista behind a brothel in Port Royal, and Manny Red a few months later after a game of post and pair in Tortuga. El Azote is a longer job, the old sinner having crawled out of his hole once Jackie's new place opened up and too much in her good graces for Izzy to get away with killing him just yet, but in time shore leave lines up with a marital spat and Izzy finds him alone cutting throats and purses down at the harbour.

It isn't his revenge to take, this bloody secret that he washes off his leathers before going back to the ship—but he rests well in Jim's bunk knowing that tomorrow and tomorrow and well after he's gone, Jim will have longer than the heartbeat after catching sight of a familiar face to decide if they're going to be better than him.


To Sea (Frenchie, rated G, 70 words, )
Prompt: Staring out to sea (Or, the one where a young Frenchie sets out on a new life.)

Blue and grey and blue again, speckled all over with shining silver like the skin of a great big fish. The first time the youth who'll come to be called Frenchie goes to sea, he isn't even certain there's another shore on the other side. But oh, that's what's grand about it, because on and on it goes in one direction and one direction only: away from where he's leaving.


Allure (Fang/Roach, rated M, 105 words, )
Prompt: loving nipple play (Or, the one where Roach gets what he wants.)

"Cocktease," Roach says, mostly just to make Fang giggle as he traces the open edges of his vest before flipping them fully aside, but there's a kernel of truth in it. Open vest or shirt unbuttoned down to his breakfast, Fang's nipples are always just out of sight—at least until Roach can get him alone and get his mouth on a dark, delectable bud. He sucks on one of them slowly, savouring its tender rise, nails scratching softly down the other one, tongue-tip lazily gliding back and forth and teeth held in reserve, intent on making the very most of his time with them.