"Intoxication", A Jacuzzi/Nice fanfiction
Arg. Damn it. This has to be some kind of curse. I only ever get sick during my days off. It's not fair. I wish I could just tear out my damn useless throat and absorb all required nutrients, water, and oxygen through my skin. Damn plants and trees have no idea how lucky they are. >-<
Sigh. Well, since I'm in such a bad mood, I'm going to attempt to cheer myself up by finally revising and posting the Jacuzzi/Nice fanfic that I should have finished up weeks ago, but I just suddenly got too busy. Also, episode ten subs were released by Ayu while I was typing this up, so my spirits are higher already. ^^ And episode 13 will air in just a few days, and I'm getting excited to see all the arcs resolved at once. Will Ennis stand up to Szilard herself or just stand aside and let him be pwned by the others? Why does Chane become separated from Claire? Is Perkins' goose cooked? (LMAO) Does Czeslaw move in with Maiza or Firo and Ennis? What the crap did those crazy awesome Gandors do to Dallas? And is Luck/Eve really just a fan pairing I found out about completely by random?
Title: Intoxication
Genre: Drama/Angst/Romance
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: An accident involving fireworks and the resulting injuries. Next to no dialog. Eight dead bodies. Standard Baccano!ness.
In action orientated fiction, the main character would often be a courageous person able to throw themselves into any threatening situation imaginable without a passing thought of the danger. Undoubtedly, there were people like that in real life, but Jacuzzi Splot could not identify himself among them, a victim of his withering self-esteem. Nice Holystone, his closest childhood friend and the bravest person he knew, would tell him much later on in life that she didn't find such people terribly impressive. The people who rushed into such situations either had no concept of the danger or were just too stupid or pumped full of adrenaline to realize it. To her, the bravest of all were the ones who jumped into action despite being scared halfway out of their minds because there was something important that simply had to be done.
Jacuzzi Splot, a generally under-confident and easily overwhelmed young man, had his moments of true bravery, though he hardly ever actually clearly remembered the parts that would have made him proud: just the parts that made him wish he hadn't remembered anything at all. Though, there was one noteworthy exception, which tickled at the edges of his thoughts every time he took the first sip of a drink. It had been his secret, initial reason for learning how to make bootleg beer, though Nice and the others had just assumed it was because he was too fearful to wander into one of the many local mafia owned and operated establishments, which was also true, but when he had first made the decision, he hadn't even considered the possibility of purchasing it from someone else. He had become curious of what kind of taste he could achieve with his own two hands, and, perhaps, in the process, make that memory surface that much more strongly.
He couldn't remember how old they had been at the time; old enough for schooling but young enough to be more concerned with play than growth. In the days before the prohibition, Jacuzzi liked to race and Nice liked fireworks. One day, Nice found out how they were made and managed to acquire a small amount of gunpowder after evading supervision. Jacuzzi, small for his age, was afraid of all the other neighborhood kids, but Nice never let them bully him, so he was with her again that day, just like any other day, chasing after butterflies, intending to capture one so they could inspect it closely together.
Jacuzzi had been absorbed with his task, but was distracted by the match hissing into life. He turned around just in time to see the explosion. He would learn when he was older that small children were often able to suppress traumatic experiences through a form of amnesia, but the only thing he forgot about that day was how he had managed to carry the screaming, bleeding, burning Nice all the way to the doctor by himself. He could still remember, in fine detail, the sight of her collapsed right eye socket and the smell of her scorched flesh and hair.
The doctor had already tied her writhing body to the operating table by the time he had returned to complete awareness. Jacuzzi had wiped at his itching eyes and pulled it away to find his tears mixing with Nice's blood. The doctor's latest shipment of anesthetic was late and Jacuzzi was tossed a bottle of whiskey to give her while he hastily sterilized and readied his equipment. "Not like that," the doctor warned, when Jacuzzi began to tilt the neck toward her lips. "You'll spill it in her burns." One quick explanation later, and Jacuzzi's mouth and throat were burning. It was all he could do to prevent himself from gagging at the strength of the smell and the taste of alcohol as he pushed it past her lips. She was conscious enough to swallow it on her own, though she bit him at one point without realizing it. They were both still very young at the time, so even those few small mouthfuls soon sent them off into a drunken slumber. Jacuzzi was still halfway on the table when the doctor completed his preparations and was forced to move him.
The memory of his whiskey flavored first kisses were hazy at best due to the immediate effects of the alcohol upon his small body, but every time he was with Nice after that was noticeably different, and, from time to time, despite never having had the courage to disobey his parents before, occasionally found the opportunity to sneak a sip of his father's carefully hidden spirits, though, maybe because the doctor had preferred a different make, it had never really tasted the same.
Jacuzzi recalled mostly everything about that day, but Nice, on the other hand, had managed to successfully erase the entire trauma from her memory from the explosion onwards, and only had to deal with the pain and suffering involved in her slow recovery. Her passion for fireworks and explosions only increased. He didn't tell Nice the truth about their real first kisses until well after their third. (Or was it their forth?)
It took months for Nice to heal. The burns were terrible and left behind horrible scars, but worst of all was the damage to her eyes. The doctor was forced to remove what remained of her right eye to successfully rebuild the socket and, because she had been staring straight into the source of the explosion, the sight in her left was reduced to a fraction of its original strength. When Jacuzzi had visited her for the first time since the bandages were removed, she hadn't even been able to recognize him. He felt small and helpless and cried a bit, feeling his heart drop in response to her question, "Who is it?", but it was then that the doctor gave him the idea. He assured him that her eyesight would improve with time and glasses, but it was the whimsical suggestion to perhaps change his appearance in some way to differentiate himself from the masses that ultimately led to the tattoo. It turned out that finding an artist willing to work on a child's allowance was easy compared to the punishment he received from his parents when he forgot to turn his face away for the first time, and he had screamed and cried during the delicate operation but would not let the man finish it another day. "Nice hurts more," Jacuzzi sobbed out loud. "Nice hurts more."
Nice noticed the change immediately, but was unable to identify the grayish blob as the twisted image of a sword. Jacuzzi, embarrassed about its true nature, lied and said he had been hit by a car. It was perhaps because of that lie that Nice never asked him if he didn't like her anymore because of her scarred and broken body. Much later, after the truth came out, Jacuzzi said it was impossible for him to ever find her ugly: the scars were like paintings and the eye-patch only granted a depth to her stare, pulling him in every single time.
They continued to grow up together, and, over the years, many of the children who had bullied him became his close friends when they grew old enough to appreciate the strength and beauty of his devotion to Nice that had only grown deeper after the accident, but it happened so gradually over so many years that Jacuzzi couldn't say when, exactly, he had become the leader of "the gang".
Years passed, and as his father's supply of liquor began to wane under the effects of the prohibition, Jacuzzi became more and more unwilling to surrender the tender memory accompanying every sip, and after asking several of his friends how alcohol was made, together, they all helped him to modify his parents' unused cellar into an underground bar.
It didn't take long for the word to spread, and soon, Jacuzzi's basement was filled with people happy to enjoy their spirits in a place deemed much safer, reliable, and fairly priced than the mafia owned bars. In no time at all, Jacuzzi was making so much money that he didn't have any reasonable use for it other than to hire friends to work for him and began to think about opening additional bars in other parts of Chicago. For the first time in his life, Jacuzzi Splot felt like he was in control; powerful; like nothing could possibly stand in his way.
He would learn soon enough that he might as well have been dreaming.
Jacuzzi didn't know it at the time, but his increasing activity had been noted, investigated, and deemed threatening to the Russo family's income. Their bars were steadily serving less patrons and making less money, and they finally had a source of blame.
One day, Jacuzzi, Nice, and a handful of others went to visit the site of their third bar to celebrate its grand opening that coming evening, only to find the building destroyed and eight of their friends lying dead on the ground. All of a sudden, the edges of Jacuzzi's vision was tainted black and he took in the scene in silent, numb observation. As Nice and the others ran to their dead friends and tested for breathing and pulses, Jacuzzi looked down upon a man he did not know with a knife buried deep in his throat, holding a machine gun in a death grip. He does not remember picking up the gun. He does not remember prying it from still-warm fingers. He does not remember running off on his own. He does not remember the others finally catching up to him in a car sometime after the fifth store and he definitely does not remember barking out orders to take him to the next place, the next destination, the next, the next, and the next. What he does remember is how his eyes were sore from crying for whole days after that afternoon of robbing eighteen Russo family businesses and how Nice smelled of gunpowder when he collapsed in her arms at the end, two stores for each body and two extra for survivor's guilt. He learned that Nice had asked around after and found every one of their grieving friends ready to stand behind him; ready to oppose the Russo family with every inch of their beings to take revenge for what they had done, and it could only be Jacuzzi that would lead them.
Jacuzzi used all of his bar profits to move his gang's frightened families to safer cities, and sold his parent's home to pay for eight funerals.
He would be sure to deliver every cent of the stolen mob money back to the Russos with interest, preparing his newly christened gang of delinquents for the war which was to come. The Russo family was large, powerful, and well-connected, but they would ultimately prove to be weak against their guerrilla tactics. Jacuzzi could never hope to fight them head on, but he could chip away at their foundation until the day the Russo family collapsed and crushed itself beneath its own weight so that even the smallest, most harmless army of ants could pick its corpse clean.
After taking in and supporting his decision, Nice rose from his bedside to let him rest, her hair brushing against his face and lifting that distinctive scent to his nose once again. He finally understood why liquor never tasted the same as it had back then: Nice's lips had been coated with gunpowder.
C&C: Comment if desired & Criticism is welcome. ^^
~~~
Also, I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words of Baccano! fanfiction this year for Nanowrimo (and if I can't quite make it with just that, I'll also work on finishing the original novel I began last Nanowrimo that's still only 2/3's complete ^^; ...but I did end up writing over 50K for that last year! :D), so if there's a pairing, situation, or anything else anyone has ever wanted to read in fanfiction form, I'll attempt to write a little something about it. What the heck; I'll even attempt yaoi or yuri for the first time ever, though I will likely show my bias by writing canon pairing prompts first. Crack prompts are also extremely welcome, as I may in fact actually go insane by the end. Crossover requests will probably be ignored unless I fangirl the series as much as I do Baccano!--which is practically impossible. And all self-insert requests are destined to end badly. >D *hates SIs with the passion of a thousand suns*
When making a request, please include a pairing (or a *short* list of characters if you want a non-romantic genfic), desired genre (if you care *any genre accepted*), desired rating (if it matters *any rating accepted*), and a prompt (definitely required). Prompts can be a word, phrase, setting, picture, whatever. I just need something to get me started. There are no limits on requests, and I'll be accepting them up until the end of the month (within reason: if it's 11:59 pm on the 30th, I might write it anyway, but I won't make it for Nanowrimo), since I'll probably need at least fifty to do this, but if I get way more than that, I probably won't be able to do them all in November, but I'll try to come back and do them later on. Also, quality will be low, since I'll be writing at breakneck speed with minimal revisions, but I'll work hard to make them at least somewhat acceptable. Nanowrimo isn't about writing a masterpiece, after all...
I'll be posting them to the community in bunches once or twice a week, so don't worry about the possibility of an overloaded friend's page. ^^ Though I'll probably post them separately in my personal journal for those who would like to read their requests as they're completed.
*Please make all requests here*
Quick! Someone request a Jon Parnell/Fan Rinshan! XD XD XD EPISODE 12 DID THIS TO ME~~~ XD XD XD
Sigh. Well, since I'm in such a bad mood, I'm going to attempt to cheer myself up by finally revising and posting the Jacuzzi/Nice fanfic that I should have finished up weeks ago, but I just suddenly got too busy. Also, episode ten subs were released by Ayu while I was typing this up, so my spirits are higher already. ^^ And episode 13 will air in just a few days, and I'm getting excited to see all the arcs resolved at once. Will Ennis stand up to Szilard herself or just stand aside and let him be pwned by the others? Why does Chane become separated from Claire? Is Perkins' goose cooked? (LMAO) Does Czeslaw move in with Maiza or Firo and Ennis? What the crap did those crazy awesome Gandors do to Dallas? And is Luck/Eve really just a fan pairing I found out about completely by random?
Title: Intoxication
Genre: Drama/Angst/Romance
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: An accident involving fireworks and the resulting injuries. Next to no dialog. Eight dead bodies. Standard Baccano!ness.
In action orientated fiction, the main character would often be a courageous person able to throw themselves into any threatening situation imaginable without a passing thought of the danger. Undoubtedly, there were people like that in real life, but Jacuzzi Splot could not identify himself among them, a victim of his withering self-esteem. Nice Holystone, his closest childhood friend and the bravest person he knew, would tell him much later on in life that she didn't find such people terribly impressive. The people who rushed into such situations either had no concept of the danger or were just too stupid or pumped full of adrenaline to realize it. To her, the bravest of all were the ones who jumped into action despite being scared halfway out of their minds because there was something important that simply had to be done.
Jacuzzi Splot, a generally under-confident and easily overwhelmed young man, had his moments of true bravery, though he hardly ever actually clearly remembered the parts that would have made him proud: just the parts that made him wish he hadn't remembered anything at all. Though, there was one noteworthy exception, which tickled at the edges of his thoughts every time he took the first sip of a drink. It had been his secret, initial reason for learning how to make bootleg beer, though Nice and the others had just assumed it was because he was too fearful to wander into one of the many local mafia owned and operated establishments, which was also true, but when he had first made the decision, he hadn't even considered the possibility of purchasing it from someone else. He had become curious of what kind of taste he could achieve with his own two hands, and, perhaps, in the process, make that memory surface that much more strongly.
He couldn't remember how old they had been at the time; old enough for schooling but young enough to be more concerned with play than growth. In the days before the prohibition, Jacuzzi liked to race and Nice liked fireworks. One day, Nice found out how they were made and managed to acquire a small amount of gunpowder after evading supervision. Jacuzzi, small for his age, was afraid of all the other neighborhood kids, but Nice never let them bully him, so he was with her again that day, just like any other day, chasing after butterflies, intending to capture one so they could inspect it closely together.
Jacuzzi had been absorbed with his task, but was distracted by the match hissing into life. He turned around just in time to see the explosion. He would learn when he was older that small children were often able to suppress traumatic experiences through a form of amnesia, but the only thing he forgot about that day was how he had managed to carry the screaming, bleeding, burning Nice all the way to the doctor by himself. He could still remember, in fine detail, the sight of her collapsed right eye socket and the smell of her scorched flesh and hair.
The doctor had already tied her writhing body to the operating table by the time he had returned to complete awareness. Jacuzzi had wiped at his itching eyes and pulled it away to find his tears mixing with Nice's blood. The doctor's latest shipment of anesthetic was late and Jacuzzi was tossed a bottle of whiskey to give her while he hastily sterilized and readied his equipment. "Not like that," the doctor warned, when Jacuzzi began to tilt the neck toward her lips. "You'll spill it in her burns." One quick explanation later, and Jacuzzi's mouth and throat were burning. It was all he could do to prevent himself from gagging at the strength of the smell and the taste of alcohol as he pushed it past her lips. She was conscious enough to swallow it on her own, though she bit him at one point without realizing it. They were both still very young at the time, so even those few small mouthfuls soon sent them off into a drunken slumber. Jacuzzi was still halfway on the table when the doctor completed his preparations and was forced to move him.
The memory of his whiskey flavored first kisses were hazy at best due to the immediate effects of the alcohol upon his small body, but every time he was with Nice after that was noticeably different, and, from time to time, despite never having had the courage to disobey his parents before, occasionally found the opportunity to sneak a sip of his father's carefully hidden spirits, though, maybe because the doctor had preferred a different make, it had never really tasted the same.
Jacuzzi recalled mostly everything about that day, but Nice, on the other hand, had managed to successfully erase the entire trauma from her memory from the explosion onwards, and only had to deal with the pain and suffering involved in her slow recovery. Her passion for fireworks and explosions only increased. He didn't tell Nice the truth about their real first kisses until well after their third. (Or was it their forth?)
It took months for Nice to heal. The burns were terrible and left behind horrible scars, but worst of all was the damage to her eyes. The doctor was forced to remove what remained of her right eye to successfully rebuild the socket and, because she had been staring straight into the source of the explosion, the sight in her left was reduced to a fraction of its original strength. When Jacuzzi had visited her for the first time since the bandages were removed, she hadn't even been able to recognize him. He felt small and helpless and cried a bit, feeling his heart drop in response to her question, "Who is it?", but it was then that the doctor gave him the idea. He assured him that her eyesight would improve with time and glasses, but it was the whimsical suggestion to perhaps change his appearance in some way to differentiate himself from the masses that ultimately led to the tattoo. It turned out that finding an artist willing to work on a child's allowance was easy compared to the punishment he received from his parents when he forgot to turn his face away for the first time, and he had screamed and cried during the delicate operation but would not let the man finish it another day. "Nice hurts more," Jacuzzi sobbed out loud. "Nice hurts more."
Nice noticed the change immediately, but was unable to identify the grayish blob as the twisted image of a sword. Jacuzzi, embarrassed about its true nature, lied and said he had been hit by a car. It was perhaps because of that lie that Nice never asked him if he didn't like her anymore because of her scarred and broken body. Much later, after the truth came out, Jacuzzi said it was impossible for him to ever find her ugly: the scars were like paintings and the eye-patch only granted a depth to her stare, pulling him in every single time.
They continued to grow up together, and, over the years, many of the children who had bullied him became his close friends when they grew old enough to appreciate the strength and beauty of his devotion to Nice that had only grown deeper after the accident, but it happened so gradually over so many years that Jacuzzi couldn't say when, exactly, he had become the leader of "the gang".
Years passed, and as his father's supply of liquor began to wane under the effects of the prohibition, Jacuzzi became more and more unwilling to surrender the tender memory accompanying every sip, and after asking several of his friends how alcohol was made, together, they all helped him to modify his parents' unused cellar into an underground bar.
It didn't take long for the word to spread, and soon, Jacuzzi's basement was filled with people happy to enjoy their spirits in a place deemed much safer, reliable, and fairly priced than the mafia owned bars. In no time at all, Jacuzzi was making so much money that he didn't have any reasonable use for it other than to hire friends to work for him and began to think about opening additional bars in other parts of Chicago. For the first time in his life, Jacuzzi Splot felt like he was in control; powerful; like nothing could possibly stand in his way.
He would learn soon enough that he might as well have been dreaming.
Jacuzzi didn't know it at the time, but his increasing activity had been noted, investigated, and deemed threatening to the Russo family's income. Their bars were steadily serving less patrons and making less money, and they finally had a source of blame.
One day, Jacuzzi, Nice, and a handful of others went to visit the site of their third bar to celebrate its grand opening that coming evening, only to find the building destroyed and eight of their friends lying dead on the ground. All of a sudden, the edges of Jacuzzi's vision was tainted black and he took in the scene in silent, numb observation. As Nice and the others ran to their dead friends and tested for breathing and pulses, Jacuzzi looked down upon a man he did not know with a knife buried deep in his throat, holding a machine gun in a death grip. He does not remember picking up the gun. He does not remember prying it from still-warm fingers. He does not remember running off on his own. He does not remember the others finally catching up to him in a car sometime after the fifth store and he definitely does not remember barking out orders to take him to the next place, the next destination, the next, the next, and the next. What he does remember is how his eyes were sore from crying for whole days after that afternoon of robbing eighteen Russo family businesses and how Nice smelled of gunpowder when he collapsed in her arms at the end, two stores for each body and two extra for survivor's guilt. He learned that Nice had asked around after and found every one of their grieving friends ready to stand behind him; ready to oppose the Russo family with every inch of their beings to take revenge for what they had done, and it could only be Jacuzzi that would lead them.
Jacuzzi used all of his bar profits to move his gang's frightened families to safer cities, and sold his parent's home to pay for eight funerals.
He would be sure to deliver every cent of the stolen mob money back to the Russos with interest, preparing his newly christened gang of delinquents for the war which was to come. The Russo family was large, powerful, and well-connected, but they would ultimately prove to be weak against their guerrilla tactics. Jacuzzi could never hope to fight them head on, but he could chip away at their foundation until the day the Russo family collapsed and crushed itself beneath its own weight so that even the smallest, most harmless army of ants could pick its corpse clean.
After taking in and supporting his decision, Nice rose from his bedside to let him rest, her hair brushing against his face and lifting that distinctive scent to his nose once again. He finally understood why liquor never tasted the same as it had back then: Nice's lips had been coated with gunpowder.
C&C: Comment if desired & Criticism is welcome. ^^
~~~
Also, I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words of Baccano! fanfiction this year for Nanowrimo (and if I can't quite make it with just that, I'll also work on finishing the original novel I began last Nanowrimo that's still only 2/3's complete ^^; ...but I did end up writing over 50K for that last year! :D), so if there's a pairing, situation, or anything else anyone has ever wanted to read in fanfiction form, I'll attempt to write a little something about it. What the heck; I'll even attempt yaoi or yuri for the first time ever, though I will likely show my bias by writing canon pairing prompts first. Crack prompts are also extremely welcome, as I may in fact actually go insane by the end. Crossover requests will probably be ignored unless I fangirl the series as much as I do Baccano!--which is practically impossible. And all self-insert requests are destined to end badly. >D *hates SIs with the passion of a thousand suns*
When making a request, please include a pairing (or a *short* list of characters if you want a non-romantic genfic), desired genre (if you care *any genre accepted*), desired rating (if it matters *any rating accepted*), and a prompt (definitely required). Prompts can be a word, phrase, setting, picture, whatever. I just need something to get me started. There are no limits on requests, and I'll be accepting them up until the end of the month (within reason: if it's 11:59 pm on the 30th, I might write it anyway, but I won't make it for Nanowrimo), since I'll probably need at least fifty to do this, but if I get way more than that, I probably won't be able to do them all in November, but I'll try to come back and do them later on. Also, quality will be low, since I'll be writing at breakneck speed with minimal revisions, but I'll work hard to make them at least somewhat acceptable. Nanowrimo isn't about writing a masterpiece, after all...
I'll be posting them to the community in bunches once or twice a week, so don't worry about the possibility of an overloaded friend's page. ^^ Though I'll probably post them separately in my personal journal for those who would like to read their requests as they're completed.
*Please make all requests here*
Quick! Someone request a Jon Parnell/Fan Rinshan! XD XD XD EPISODE 12 DID THIS TO ME~~~ XD XD XD