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hoosierbitch- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, elrhiarhodan! I am so glad that we are friends. :-) Which. Does not quite convey how much you mean to me, or the depth of the relationship that we've developed over the past years--through fic, and conversations, and SEEING THE LION KING ON BROADWAY, and drunkenmadlibs in Chicago. You are one of the best people I know. You're a brilliant, generous, amazing woman, and I am so happy to celebrate your birthday. ♥ (At some point, I shall write you a birthday fic! I don't know what it will be. But it will involve BOOTS!)
- Both of my shows are over! Directing & acting. I have EVENINGS again! I should write. O.o
- DO YOU KNOW HOW COOL KINDLES ARE? VERY COOL, IS THE ANSWER. I got one on a whim, because I was going into two weeks of rehearsal for a 2.5 hour play where I was onstage for maybe 15 minutes, and knew I was going to have a lot of downtime. Amazon's got that 30-day return policy, so I thought I'd just sort of...rent it. NOW WE ARE MARRIED, AND I READ ALL THE BOOKS.
- Just watched Matt on Glee. "Stanislavski said the fingers are the eyes to the body, but he never mentioned that the toes are the...ears." I need Cooper/Blaine/Kurt porn where Cooper misquotes Brecht and then deepthroats Blaine. The Margaret Thatcher dog can watch.
AND NOW, AN IMPROMPTU PROMPT MEME!
Give me a prompt, and I will write a 100-word-ish drabble for it. Provide pairing or central character, a scenario or starting line, and I shall give you GENIUS! Or perhaps MEDIOCRITY! I may not give you a completed fic, but it will be something. Perhaps a haiku? A sonnet? An Irish drinking song? Prompt me, and find out! :-)
Fandoms: White Collar, XMFC, Glee, Grimm, Merlin, Parks & Recreation, Star Trek (2009), JOHN CARTER OF ABDOMINAL MUSCLES, Avengers
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Date: 2012-04-12 07:16 am (UTC)Well...
That sounds like a prompt to me... If you want something done RIGHT, do it yourself! :-)
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Date: 2012-04-12 07:32 am (UTC)Well, they're a product of the Evil Empire that is Amazon... and everything a Kindle can do, an iPad can do better, and without trying to rip off publishers (and by extension, authors and booksellers), cheat on sales tax (and thus undercut local business), or monopolize multiple industries.
Sorry to dampen your SQUEEE, but...
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Date: 2012-04-11 03:31 am (UTC)Neal meets Captain America.
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Date: 2012-04-11 03:43 am (UTC)"Right," Neal says faintly, looking down at the enormous hand engulfing his.
Captain America doesn't look like a Steve. Steve seems like a nice guy who works in an office buildings and borrows mechanical pencils, not a...a monument to human engineering.
Neal's pretty sure that his desire to get Captain America drunk is unpatriotic. If he gets Stark involved, they might be able to do tequila shots off his abs before the night's out...
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Date: 2012-04-11 03:46 am (UTC)Peter
'Now youre just somebody that I used to know?'
Nope - no originality here, But I couldn't get it out of my head that Peter was singing it to Neal
"Now you're just somebody that I used to know. SomeBODEEEeeeEEE..."
Date: 2012-04-11 04:01 am (UTC)*
Neal had left everything behind. He'd run at Peter's signal and taken with him only the clothes on his back and the hat on his head. Peter can't even begin to imagine leaving everything behind. Uprooting yourself in seconds.
After Neal left, Peter decided that he should take care of the details. He sat in Neal's apartment and didn't know whether to pack Neal's things up into boxes (Byron's clothes, FBI-funded painting supplies, empty wine bottles), or if he should preserve the scene.
He should probably tell the post office to hold Neal's mail. Or have it forwarded to the office. Maybe he should pay Neal's cell phone bill--just in case Neal had taken his phone with him, and wanted to call at some point in the future. Did Neal have plants? Was Peter supposed to water them?
He didn't know--he didn't know if Neal would be coming back. He just knew that he was one of the things that Neal had left behind.
Re: "Now you're just somebody that I used to know. SomeBODEEEeeeEEE..."
From:(no subject)
From:Re: "Now you're just somebody that I used to know. SomeBODEEEeeeEEE..."
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-04-17 04:25 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 03:48 am (UTC)And a prompt for you: Peter feels guilty about last Sunday.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 04:21 am (UTC)(And...is there a previous Sunday canonically/fanonically that I'm not thinking of, or is it up to me to create it? :D)
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From:Elizabeth Knows What You Did Last Sunday
Date: 2012-04-13 03:07 pm (UTC)"In our bed?" She seems more hurt than surprised. "Peter, don't you ever think before you act? Or do you save all your higher brain functions for the office?"
"Hey," he says, surprised at the vehemence of her attack. "It's not that serious--"
She points at the bed, at the evidence of his and Neal's activities last weekend, and his protests die off. "Maybe," she says archly, "if you had tried it out on me first, your attempt with Neal wouldn't have gone so badly."
"You...do you want me to give it another shot?" She nods. "But I made such a mess of it last time!"
"Well," she says, stepping forward and toying with the top button of his shirt, "I'm a very forgiving wife. And if you make something without syrup, it won't make get all over the sheets when you get 'caught up in the moment' and pour it all over Neal's stomach."
Neal, who's tied spread-eagled on top of the stained sheets, mumbles an indignant reply.
"I could do...croissants," Peter says.
"I'll get fresh jam from the farmer's market," Elizabeth decides. "If you're going to make breakfast in bed, you might as well do it right."
Re: Elizabeth Knows What You Did Last Sunday
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 03:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 04:36 am (UTC)*
It's hot out, which Kirk says is normal. Kirk talks pretty much constantly, which is okay, because Neal doesn't have much to say yet. He lets Kirk tuck him into a corner and watches as Kirk cheerfully accosts pedestrians, not so much 'begging' for money as 'teasing' for it. There's an angry bite to Kirk's words. Neal doesn't slip out of the alcove where Kirk had put him. (You running? Kirk had asked, looking him up and down. Neal tried to catch his breath and couldn't. Okay, Kirk said, giving him some space. Just do what I tell you to do.)
It's hot, hotter than any world Neal's been on before. He wants to strip down until it's just his skin between him and the sun, but Kirk makes him keep his clothes on. There are too many people around, anyway. Sweat makes his clothes stick it to his skin; he feels like a lizard outgrowing its skin, uncomfortable and changing. When night falls, and his hands and neck and face are hot and red with suburn, he understands Kirk's orders. Kirk's used to the sun. He's baked a deep brown. His shirt doesn't have any sleeves. (It's a loose shirt, though; it's not--it still covers more than it reveals.)
"It'll get colder now," Kirk says with a lopsided grin. Neal nods and shifts his eyes away from Kirk's. "I have extra blankets, if you want. Is anyone--are you being followed?"
Neal says "No," and Kirk's lopsided grin stretches out across his whole face.
"Knew you could talk," Kirk says, slapping Neal on the shoulder.
"No one's coming," Neal says fiercely, flinching away from Kirk's hand, glaring at the sand underneath his feet.
"Yeah," Kirk says, after a pause where Neal forces himself to meet Kirk's eyes again. They both have blue eyes. Kirk's eyes are hard to look at for too long; Neal wonders if his are haunted, too.
Kirk's got stuff stashed in a giant metal pipe that's half-buried in sand, off to the side of the docks where the construction work has slowed-down in an underfunded slump. It's like a playground. A playground filled with vagrants, and voices, and sometimes firelight. Neal slips every so often on the metal. It's cold under his sunburnt hands; it feels good. Most of the time Kirk catches him. Most of the time Neal manages to let him.
They sleep in the metal pipe. The sand digs into Neal's skin. He feels soft and pale and out of place, wrapped in a rough blanket and Kirk's brown arms. The pipe smells like rust and ethanol.
He has been free for three days.
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Date: 2012-04-11 03:54 am (UTC)Prompts :)
Merlin: Arthur and Merlin play a kinky game where Arthur can't do anything without being told (can't come, can't make a sound without permission, etc.). Somehow, Arthur always thinks he has much more self-control than he ends up having (i.e., Merlin cheats with magic and Arthur's like "wait, I totally didn't mean to lose control like that, that's weird.")
or
XMFC/WC: They question Charles and Erik who witnessed a bizarre crime. Peter suspects there's more to the story. But when Neal and Charles flirt, there is much grumbling from Erik and Peter.
need
Date: 2012-04-13 03:20 pm (UTC)"It won't take that long," Merlin murmurs, the whisper of cloth on metal echoing the rhythm of Arthur's shaky breath. "Isn't that right, sire?"
He'd nod, if he could move his head; he'd say Fuck you, Merlin, if there wasn't a balled up cloth in his mouth; he'd touch his cock, if his hands weren't tied high behind his back, because he is so close.
"I'm not even halfway done," Merlin says, standing up and stretching.
Arthur whimpers. The sound's barely muffled by the gag. He hitches his hips forward helplessly, offering his cock to Merlin, showing him the evidence of his need.
"You said you could wait," Merlin says, mocking him. "'It'll only take a few minutes,' you said. And you offered to--how did you put it?" Merlin walks up behind him and crouches, his knees brushing against Arthur's back, his hands tracing over the elaborate ropework binding Arthur's arms together from wrist to elbow. "You offered to start without me, isn't that right? Such a generous lover I have."
Arthur bows his head lower, deeper than the necessary curl of his body that the ropes demand.
"We have to take care of our things," Merlin says sternly, giving Arthur's tense shoulders a brief caress before standing and walking back to the table. Merlin picks up Arthur's breastplate--which had been caked in mud, and it is Merlin's job to clean it, and it was well within Arthur's rights to remind his manservant to take care of the armor, and--and maybe Arthur had been a bit high-handed. Maybe the armor could have waited, and he could have gotten on his knees right away and sucked Merlin off (like he'd promised to do that morning, when he'd left Merlin in his bed, on his way out to the training field).
Re: need
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 04:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 04:50 am (UTC)...and, while you are deciding:
When Peter finally finds them again, they're in the shoe department. "We've narrowed it down to a few final contestants," Elizabeth whispers, nodding at the row of shoes that Neal's arranged carefully in the middle of the aisle.
"Which ones are your favorites?" Peter asks.
"For the brown ones, I like these," Neal says, nudging a pair of leather shoes with a blue sock-clad foot. "But then I have to have sneakers, for gym, and so I think these ones are good?" Neal's less sure about this selection. His foot hovers between Nike and New Balance. Peter hmmms and watches as attentively as he can while Neal parades down the aisle one more time in each pair, his small face drawn tight with concentration. By the time he's picked out three pairs--one for dressing up, one for gym, one for every day--Peter's ready to go.
He's picking up the boxes to carry to the register when he notices it. Neal's painfully familiar I wonder if I could steal that... glance. Peter follows his line of sight.
Huh.
"Neal...do you want to try on the light-up shoes?"
Neal jumps and shakes his head.
The light-up shoes (which come in My Little Pony, Transformers, Barbie, and rainbow) aren't on sale, unlike the 'back to school' section the rest of his shoes had come from.
"I really think you should get a fourth pair ," Peter says with a frown.
Neal's eyes flicker between Peter and a box of Transformer shoes (with--what, lightbulbs? stuck in the heels).
"I don't need 'em," Neal says slowly, leaning a little bit towards the rack.
"Definitely another pair," Elizabeth says sagely, nodding along. "What if you're walking Satchmo at night, and he wanders away? This way, he'll be able to see you, and come back."
Neal's squinting suspiciously at them. They're neither of them very subtle.
"Just try on the da--dang shoes," Peter says, shoving Neal's shoulder gently.
Neal decides on the rainbow light-up shoes. He carries that box out himself.
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Date: 2012-04-11 06:12 am (UTC)But for the actual prompt, because I am missing white collar, Neal/Elizabeth/Peter or Neal/Moz, There is something very wrong here.
John Carter!
Date: 2012-04-11 08:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 11:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-04-11 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-11 10:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-12 04:07 am (UTC)Brad/Neal. Possibly involving the Guessing Games theme, but either way, THERE MUST BE HOPEFUL COFFEE okay? Okay. Also, if you ever feel like writing a small coda to Guessing Games, you should feel free.
Neal/Brad, in the "Guessing Games" genre, because of how I adore you.
Date: 2012-04-28 10:03 pm (UTC)Which is good. Both the sex and the timing.
Brad's a light sleeper most nights. They both are. After sex Brad sprawls and snores (well, after sex and clean-up and a glass of water and snuggling, which Brad insists on calling manly snuggling), and Neal--after--sometimes--can't sleep.
He has markers. Markers made especially for drawing on skin (marketed to children, primarily, so that they won't accidentally poison each other by way of Sharpie). Brad had bought him the markers, with an accompanying ramble about post-modern artistic pursuits and found canvases.
On the nights Neal can't sleep (when too many things are still stirring in his head), he breaks out the markers, and pulls the blankets off the bed, and he just...doodles. Starts at Brad's shoulder and makes waterfalls that turn into a flowing gown which might become a ladder or maybe a tree, depending on if he goes down Brad's ribs or over across his spine.
If Brad's sleeping on his side, sometimes Neal will draw on Brad's knee. The injured one, with the scarring, the muscles and tendons reshaped and put back in place.
There are five markers, five basic colors. He thinks he could draw new pictures with them until they run out of ink--scrawled across Brad's stomach and scattered across his thighs--and then maybe he won't need them anymore. Or maybe he will.
He ends with a swirl of random shapes across the back of Brad's hand (it'll probably end up pressed against Brad's cheek, leaving a mash of color, but it comes out easily enough in the shower). Brad looks like a Maori warrior tonight. Lines and dots and shapes, all in blue, marking his triumphs.
Neal doodles a line on the back of his own hand before he caps the markers and pulls the blankets back onto the bed.
Re: Neal/Brad, in the "Guessing Games" genre, because of how I adore you.
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-12 02:26 pm (UTC)Jim & Spock -- mind to mind
Date: 2012-04-28 10:36 pm (UTC)The world circles around him. If he had a corporeal body here, he would have vomited; as it is, he can feel his fingers shaking on Jim’s face, through the thin tether that connects his mind to his body.
He must let go.
There is nothing to hold onto.
He tries to look for Jim, to talk him back into his body, to see if he can make the darkness of this empty, swirling world form into something recognizable.
He does not know what to look for. He does not know what the features of this landscape might signify. He does not know what the absence of landmarks might mean.
He hopes, although he already suspects that he is wrong, that this is not what Jim’s mind is always like. This must be a reaction to the assault, he thinks, this must be a reeling, a recovery.
Something sharp slices through him. The cacophony coughs into a hum.
“Spock?”
Jim is either small or far away. Wearing his dress uniform but no shoes, his hair neatly made but his eye still black, his lip still swollen.
The world inverts and Jim disappears. Something starts pulling Spock forward, a hand on his bicep, towing him through the whirlpools. The hum is not a nebulous sound. The hum is the screams turned into whispers. When Spock is moving, he can understand them. The hand on his bicep tightens. As he moves faster, the voices become clearer.
He thinks maybe his guide does not know where he is going.
Spock can no longer feel his fingers on the pulse points of Jim’s face; maybe his guide has been pulling him deeper instead of forward.
He reaches towards the sick, empty space in front of him, and something cuts through his hand. He comes to a stop so quickly that he does vomit—his body turning in on itself over and over, the nova of pain in his hand enveloping him and turning the edges of Jim’s mind orange.
“Spock?”
Jim is there and holding his hand. Naked, now, with just his bruises and brushed hair.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jim tells him, looking nervously from side to side. “I can’t watch your back here. There’s too much else—there’s too much—you shouldn’t be here.”
“Where should I be?”
The orange edges of the world sweep over them, transforming the absence into walls and a floor and gravity. They are still screaming, here, but it’s a well-balanced symphony, instead of just Jim’s voice, raw and young and ancient, a chorus of himself, screaming.
“You can leave from here,” Jim says, gesturing at a dark orange door with swirling red edges. “It’s okay. I always make sure there’s a way out, so that no one can get trapped.”
“You will accompany me.”
Jim says no and the voices swell with fear. With his left hand, Spock grabs Jim’s bicep, with his right, he touches Jim’s face.
Instead of pulling Jim towards the door, he pulls the door closer to Jim, digging his mental heels and teeth into the slippery fabric of this world.
Jim lets him. If he hadn’t, they never would have escaped. The door explodes and Jim screams and Spock is in two places at once, two terrors before his eyes, two Jims shaking underneath his spread fingers.
He lets go as soon as the reality of sickbay sinks in around him. Stumbles away from Jim’s bedside until he can press his back against the wall and his palms against the smooth surface and listen to his own breathing and try to forget, try to decipher, try to identify the people who had been screaming in Jim’s head.
Re: Jim & Spock -- mind to mind
From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-12 03:30 pm (UTC)pink crayons [kid!Neal, PG-13, 1/3]
Date: 2012-05-18 06:00 pm (UTC)Warning for homophobic language & attitudes.
*
“Nice fairy shoes,” Uncle Mike says, when Neal reaches for his light-up sneakers. “I bet the other kids give you a lot of shit for those, huh? Elizabeth must have picked them out for you.” Uncle Mike chuckles and Neal puts them down quickly and grabs his gym shoes. They’re better for going out in the cold anyway. Better for walking. Um. Better. “And I think you grabbed Elizabeth’s scarf by mistake, kiddo.”
Uncle Mike tells him not to be a girl and punches him on the shoulder (just lightly, just a joke), and Neal’s lungs close up for a second. He’d been doing really good. “Now put it back so we can go,” Mike says. Neal glances down at the scarf in his hands (it’s pink and one of the softest things he’s ever felt) and quickly puts it back on the coat rack.
“I wasn’t going to steal it,” he says. He really wasn’t.
“I didn’t think you were,” Mike says, ruffling Neal’s hair. “You just don’t want anyone to think you’re a…well, a sissy, do you?”
“This is mine,” he lies, grabbing one of Peter’s scarves. “This is the one I meant to take.” Mike grabs Satchmo’s leash and ruffles Neal’s hair.
Neal wraps the scarf around his neck and quietly follows Mike out the door.
He is quiet on the walk and quiet when they get home.
*
Mike is staying for a week. Neal is sleeping on the couch, because Mike has a bad back and needs the bed. Neal doesn’t like it in the living room. The window is too big, and Satchmo sticks his nose in Neal’s face when he’s trying to sleep.
Neal is different. Which he knows, which he’s always known. He’d thought that he was different because of money and because of his mom, but here, now, with Peter and Elizabeth, and money and no mom, he is still different. Sometimes the other kids talk and he doesn’t know what they’re saying, and sometimes he doesn’t care about the things they’re talking about, and sometimes they’re talking about him.
He doesn’t wear his light-up shoes to school, and he stops bringing his own crayons out at art time, and he asks for shoes that look like the other boys’ shoes.
*
He crosses Elizabeth’s scarf off the list of things that he wants to take back home with him.
*
He gets rid of his pink and purple crayons. Hides them in a drawer, because he’s not going to throw them away, because he’s going to run out of all the other colors at some point, and it’s better to have girly colors than no colors at all. Probably.
*
He stops wearing his light-up shoes. Tabitha, who is in his class, also has light up shoes; hers have Pocahontas on them.
*
He steals one of the pictures from the mantel (and he feels bad about the stealing, because Peter and Elizabeth will run out of money some day, he can’t keep taking things from them) and studies it. Neal in the picture is wearing a suit, and black shoes, and Peter has his arm over his shoulders and Neal has his arm around Elizabeth’s waist and they’re all smiling.
He keeps the picture hidden in the couch. He’ll put it back, when Uncle Mike leaves and Neal gets his room—the guest room—back.
*
pink crayons [kid!Neal, PG-13, 2/3]
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-13 03:21 am (UTC)No worries if you don't have time to respond. Just thought I'd offer a prompt. You don't know me, but I love your fic <3
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-23 03:58 am (UTC)Also, have you read any good Cooper/Blaine/Kurt? Does this exist? I want it.
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Date: 2012-04-28 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-08 02:18 pm (UTC)And then I realized that you're the author of the White Collar stuff I've been mainlining off of ao3. MIND. BLOWN.
so yes, this is my running in sideways to tell you that it turns out two of my favourite authors from two different fandoms are both you.
yep.
(and this post is from like, a month ago, so i will not leave a prompt, lol)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-18 06:11 pm (UTC)Also, you should totes post a prompt if you have one--these are the posts I browse whenever I get stuck for ideas. :-)
Thanks again, lovely!
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