YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 4

[a1c0bb]

for this bonus round, the theme is historical fiction! prompts inspired by specific moments in (real or fictional) history.

this round will end on july 15th

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each

Comments

PROMPT: Tokusatsu Yuri Ships United Front

[baradhiblue]

Gothic or decadent fiction. Generally had as a turn of the century thing but hmmmm what century?

FILL: Team Anime/Manga

[hopelessgemini]

word count: 1391

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall, a very dead arthur watts

extra tags: alluded-to gore/violence. my apologies to the inventors of gothic fiction for the genre i just butchered to write funny detective winter schnee

//

It is, characteristically, a particularly stormy night.

Winter looks up into the sky overhead as she waits for Cinder to come outside and open the fucking door, counting the seconds between the thunder and lightning. The storm is practically on top of them; the wind hasn’t stopped whipping rain directly into her face for the whole walk over. She isn’t looking forward to heading home in the morning.

That is, she thinks, if she can stand to leave.

She knocks on the door again, then kicks it for good measure. Something inside clatters, assumedly Cinder rolling halfway down the stairs in her blankets. Around her, the wind picks up again, and she draws her hood further over her head, determined not to let her hair get too wet.

“There’s been a murder,” Cinder says as she opens the door.

“Of course there has.” Winter steps inside, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head, and wrestles her coat off in the hallway. “There’s always a murder when you’re involved.”

“I didn’t kill him this time,” Cinder says haughtily, drawing her blankets higher around her shoulders. “It was ghosts, or something. You know, the ghosts.”

“Right,” Winter agrees, setting her briefcase down by the door. “And that’s why you were sleeping. Because there’s been a murder that you didn’t do.”

“I mean, I’m glad he’s dead.” She scrunches up her nose, looking petulant. “But I didn’t kill him. That would have been effort.”

Winter sighs. “Well, we’ll see. Where is he?”

She gestures to the living room. “In there. Fair warning, he’s a bit —”

She rounds the corner, gets a good look at the state of the corpse, and backs away again. “Mangled?”

“See? Not me. Ghosts.”

“Ghosts don’t exist,” Winter mutters, “and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t do that. Have you thought about how you’re going to clean your living room of evidence?”

Cinder makes a face. “I’ve been trying not to. I was hoping you were going to do that.”

“I mean, I can try.” She runs through the contents of her briefcase in her head, winces when she remembers she didn’t think to bring gloves. “You may need to cut your losses and move.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Cinder says. Her disgusted expression twists into a thoughtful frown. “That’s Arthur Watts. He’s my landlord.”

“Oh, that looks terrible, Cinder.”

“I know,” she groans, “but do you really think I could gut him like that?”

“He may have swallowed an explosive,” Winter suggests. The thought makes her grimace. “Did you hear anything? Why is — actually, why is he here in the first place?”

“Not very good at collecting evidence, are you?” Cinder grins. She steps up into the circle of Winter’s arms and settles her head on her shoulder, humming softly. “He was like that on my carpet when I woke up. I called you. I went outside. I came back and went to bed. That’s all.”

Winter rests her chin on the top of Cinder’s head. She believes her, obviously. They’ve long moved past the need for dishonesty. A little ironic, perhaps, given the number of murders under Cinder’s belt, but still. “So someone wanted you to see his corpse? That seems pretty safe to assume, don’t you think?”

“Eugh,” Cinder says eloquently. “A favour?”

“Or a threat.” She fixes her gaze on the mirror in the hallway, finding their reflections and the awkward curve of Cinder’s half-smile. Winter would never say it out loud, but she adores it when Cinder smiles like that, like she’s unused to letting herself relish in the sensation of being held. “Friends with any murderers?”

Cinder hums against her collarbone. “Mm. Many. No one insane enough to do all this, though. That’s why it was ghosts.”

Winter snorts, but plays along. “Why? Any vengeful axe murderers lurking in the floorboards?”

“He probably killed the last tenant,” she muses, “maybe it was them.”

“How do you figure?”

She lets go of her blanket to gesture into the living room, rolling her eyes. “There were bloodstains on the carpet when I moved in.” She wrinkles her nose. “And now there are more. It’ll take forever to get those out.”

Winter sighs. That’s probably her cue to get on with actually looking around, then. “I’ll ask my brother nicely. I’m sure he knows someone who won’t ask questions.” She lets go of Cinder, ignores her protesting whine, steels herself, and walks back into the living room.

//

“Any news?”

Winter runs a hand through her hair as she looks over. It’s probably meant to look dashing, but it comes off a little more awkward than anything. Indescribably charmed, Cinder props her chin on her hand and watches her pull herself back into ‘talking to people’ mode. “Nothing concrete yet. How many escaped convicts do you know?”

Cinder, an escaped convict, tilts her head to the side. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I doubt anyone with a track record of actual murder would be this sloppy.” She gestures to the room around her, to the blood caked on the walls and the gutless man draped over the sofa.

“See? Ghosts.”

Winter’s brow furrows. “Swallowing an explosive seems more likely.”

“And more Watts,” Cinder concedes. “He always was a bit — well. You know.”

She removes the gloves she stole from Cinder’s sink with a sigh. “Stuck up? I remember.”

Cinder grins to herself. Winter’s only met him twice, both times because there was a similarly gruesome murder in her living room and she’d needed letting into the property to investigate. He really did suck. “Maybe another tenant got fed up and decided to leave me a present.”

“Maybe,” Winter mutters, circling around to the back of the sofa. Her expression seems to be caught between a wince and a scowl. Cinder watches her get onto her hands and knees and peer at her carpet with no small amount of satisfaction. “Tenants don’t generally tend to exhibit the same behaviour as cats, though.”

She gets up, nods to herself, and walks briskly out of the room. Cinder has to scramble to her feet to follow her, leaving her blanket draped over one of her more irrelevant chairs. She’ll regret that when they inevitably wind up in her bed. “Where are you going?”

“To get a glass of water. You do still have that, don’t you?”

Cinder rolls her eyes. “No, I gave it all away to charity. Diverted the pipes and everything.”

Winter is already wandering around the kitchen when she catches up, skimming her fingers along her countertops and making weird, detective-y faces to herself. There’s a glass in her hand that she’s somehow avoiding filling, skirting around the sink and poking things like it’s a game. Cinder would be offended if she hadn’t already done it every time she’d come over for murder-related purposes before. “Nothing’s been taken,” she murmurs — and, turning to Cinder, “Did you notice anything different in the rest of the house? Missing items, that kind of thing?”

“Someone stole the doormat,” Cinder says, which goes without saying, “but that was about six months ago.”

“Oh, of course. How relevant.” Winter turns around and resumes inspecting the contents of her cupboards. “No glasses missing, right?”

“Nothing sharp,” she confirms. “Nothing at all, actually.”

Winter glances over at her again, and this time there’s something different in her eyes, as awkward and new as it always has been. “Well, I’ll need to sleep on it, see if that helps.”

She’s still so bad at flirting. Cinder steps up to her, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “In my bed?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well,” she lets her gaze drift through the windows, to where the rain is still hammering at her shitty garden in her shitty neighbourhood in the middle of nowhere, “there’s not a guest room. So I suppose we’ll just have to share.”

//

Cinder wakes up when Winter lurches out of bed and shouts, “Fucking obviously.”

She rolls onto her side, groaning when Winter starts digging around for her clothes in the dark. “What’s obvious?”

“The evidence,” Winter says passionately. It shouldn’t be attractive. “I’ll be back. Hold tight.”

Cinder watches her tug her shirt over her head and disappear downstairs with her tongue caught between her teeth. Winter is, she reminds herself, one of the strangest people she’s ever met.