|
Summary: A tiny bit of nothing about sleep and coffee and not being
violent men. Set maybe a few months after MR. Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.
And
My Bed's Freezing By Now Anyways
If you march off into the distance, the movie might end, the book might close upon itself, the legend might fade. But you'll still be there, right? You're the one in the darkness behind the eyes, you're the one who has to deal with staring into the sunset and getting terrible, terrible eyestrain. Because I mean really... who only exists inside the stories told about them? - In the steam that boiled silently off of the surface of the coffee, Mal closed her eyes and thought about brighter things than war. In the tents next to the other lads - well, lasses, technically - she'd been Mal, just Mal, among Ozzer and Tonker and Shufti and Wazzer and Lofty. She didn't even know what their boy names had been (Polly's Oliver stuck in her mind, of course) but their nicknames rang out in her mind's ear like badly-tuned handbells. And she'd been Mal. Was she too scary for a nickname? The vampire with a penchant for all things sun-roasted, tiny, and caffeine-packed. Polly had told her later that they'd all watched her with a quiet sense of awe... she was too cool for them, and they weren't sure how to handle her. "You don't have to be so nocturnal," muttered Polly from behind her. "I'm a vampire," Mal said quietly, and drank from the mug. Polly pulled up a chair and swung a leg over it, sitting backwards like a boy, her arms crossed over the back of the chair and her chin on her forearms. She blinked sleepily in the nothinglight of the night-time dining room in the two-bit, backwoods inn, and gave Mal what she probably thought was a smile. It ended up being something more along the lines of a wobbly grimace. Polly never had very good control over herself when she was half-asleep. They sat in silence for a long while, Mal continuing to nurse her coffee and Polly trying desperately not to fall back asleep. Sergeant and Corporal, with their little lads in the barn out back and their beds narrow and hard and up two flights of rickety stairs. "Your bed was cold," Polly mumbled into the sleeves of her nightshirt, surrendering her eyelids to gravity. "I'm not a very warm person," Mal said. "You are too thingee," said Polly. "Warm, I mean." "Hmm," Mal said. "And stuff," said Polly. "And you don't have to be all thingee just cuz you're a wossname." "Girl?" "Nonono... thingee. Wossname. Blood? Teeth?" "Vampire?" "Ahh, rightright, that's the socks." Giggle. "Polly?" "Mm?" Her eyelids fluttered, and she smiled beatifically. "Have you been drinking?" "Not a lot. And I'm a bar lady anyways." "You're a sergeant now, not a bartender. You should be a role model for the lads." Polly opened her eyes and gave Mal a slow, wise look. "You're a corporal now," she whispered. "And I swear on the Duchess, I am not a violent man, but if you don't come back to bed so help me..." Mal, wide-eyed, felt the muscles of her stomach clench for a moment. "I..." "You're a corporal," she said. "You're a corporal, not a vampire. And we have marching in the morning." Polly smiled, now, and it seemed to Mal that suddenly bed was a rather worryingly inviting prospect. "It's too early to go back to bed," she said finally, fighting it all the way. "And my bed's freezing by now anyways." Polly put a hand on Mal's, and the vampire jumped. Polly smiled again. "Cold?" she murmured, and Mal's heart went a little bit faster than she thought it should. "Cold can be driven off." "Er... how?" "Sleeping," Polly said, and pulled her corporal up the stairs. - And the story ends, and the watchers pull away, and the darkness behind the eyes gets a little bit of privacy in order to warm up its bed. |