fic prompts

[raven]

So, hello, I'm sorry for the spam. But I have a bad case of Sunday night hyperactivity. If you want a ficlet, please say so: fandom, character(s), prompt - I like this list and this list, but anything. Won't promise to write them all, but will try. (forthwritten, this time I will try to do better.)

Comments

[ladyvivien]

James Bond/Judi Dench!M, accidental baby acquisition ;)

[raven]

Alas, I do not know them well enough to write. anything else?

[ladyvivien]

Amy, Rory and River fluffy family time?

[forthwritten]

I prefer to think that you are writing my Nightingale genderswap fic as some kind of out-of-control epic, possibly featuring the Sherlock bakery fic I've also pestered you for :P

Not quite what you asked for? but.

[raven]

Nightingale, Grant and May sounds like a law firm, Peter insists, but Lesley disagrees.

“It’s classic!” she insists. “Listen to the man who is not now, but will one day, be a million years older than you.”

“Age before wisdom.” Nightingale smiles. “But surely, Peter, you acknowledge it has, um, a ring to it.”

Peter isn’t convinced until the sign painters have been and gone and it’s too late to object anyway, but he has to admit it looks good above the shop window in the flowing gilded script. And as he might have predicted, the people round about call it Nightingale’s – Nightingale’s the cake shop in between the grocer’s and the Buddhist centre – and that, Lesley does keep on saying, has just the right cadence, like Magnolia Bakery or something similarly artisanal.

“We’re not artisanal,” Peter says, sulkily. “We’re good.”

On that, at least, they are all agreed. They do tiny wedding cupcakes with delicate frosted patterns, they do children’s birthday party cakes featuring icing locomotives with in-built whistles, they do neon sheet cakes with glorious gore commemorating PUNK IS DEAD. What they all have in common is light-as-air sponge and buttercream to die for. “You don’t need magic for this,” Nightingale cautions. “At least… not Newtonian magic.”

Peter’s seen copies of his, Lesley’s and Nightingale’s latest MRI scans, and appreciates that no, cake-making is not something for which you risk those soft dark shadows – but for Nightingale at least, sometimes magic comes easy as breathing, and he suspects something more than wire holds up the very best creations. And perhaps it is worth it, for the edible pot-of-gold suspended at the end of the marzipan rainbow all dangled above the greenest, tackiest St Patrick’s Day cake the world has ever seen.

Peter practises small forma, in the back of the shop after night has fallen, while Lesley proofs tomorrow’s dough and Nightingale walks through the shop, closing up, carrying his own light. “Someone will see,” Lesley calls, but Nightingale smiles.

“For once I find I don’t mind,” he says, covered in glittering sugar, and Peter smiles back.

Re: Not quite what you asked for? but.

[musesfool]

Aw, this is perfect and lovely.

Re: Not quite what you asked for? but.

[mirabile]

Oh my god, but this is gorgeous!

Re: Not quite what you asked for? but.

[forthwritten]

I've read this several times now. And it's still lovely <3

Re: Not quite what you asked for? but.

[sholio]

This is amazingly adorable. ♥

Re: Not quite what you asked for? but.

[philomytha]

Oh, lovely! Also it's making me hungry :-)

[hedda62]

That second list is interesting... how about Slings & Arrows, deserted island, with all the Shakespearean allusion that implies.

[raven]

Apropos of nothing, Geoffrey says: "They used to make me run corporate team-building seminars."

"I remember, Geoffrey," Anna tells him. "I was there, remember? There was that nice couple from Ottawa you made be Goneril and Regan." She pauses. "That worked pretty well, actually. The tall one really got into it, I thought I should let her go ahead of me in the line for the bathroom."

Geoffrey nods, although the firelight is very low and he's pretty sure she can't see him. "I bring it up," he says after a while, "because I think maybe we should have included other skills. Like, I don't know, navigating by the stars. Sending smoke signals. Telling edible plants from ones that will make you die horribly burbling about giant spiders."

"Geoffrey."

"Sorry," he says, quickly. He's flat on his back, eyes on the stars, crawling slowing around the North Star, but he reaches out blindly until he finds her hand to squeeze. "Sorry, Anna."

"That's okay." She sighs. "What do you suppose the others are doing now?"

"Hopefully" - Geoffrey looks at his watch, realises he can't make out the dial - "in between hissy fits about the forgeries of jealousy and torturing her understudy, my wife is starting to wonder where I am." He pauses. "Hopefully."

"She is," Anna says with unexpected forthrightness. "She doesn't do well without you, Geoffrey."

"Nor I, without her," Geoffrey says, comfortably. "I hope you're happy, being the only functionally sane person in my company, Anna. I hope... I hope you're happy."

"Yes," she says, instantly, and then, hesitantly: "But I would give a thousand furlongs of sea, for..."

"An acre of barren ground," Geoffrey says, still comfortably, "long heath, brown furze, green room, maybe that crappy coffee place down the street from the theatre, on soup day."

"They will find us, won't they," Anna says.

Geoffrey squeezes her hand again. "Take courage, dear heart. Ellen is likely weeping beautiful buckets over the provincial coastguard."

"Probably," Anna says, and louder: "¡No pasaran!"

"No pasaran," Geoffrey agrees, watching the sparks fly upwards, brightness into dark.

[hedda62]

Oh, lovely lovely! "long heath, brown furze, green room, maybe that crappy coffee place down the street from the theatre, on soup day." Yes. These two are among my favorite characters ever.

[scribe]

due South telepathy? With any characters you desire?

[raven]

Ray Kowalski is an upstanding kinda guy. Kind of a hardass, and not quite in a league with the sharp, beautiful intellectual perfection of, to pick an example entirely at random, Assistant State's Attorney Kowalski, but streetwise. And able to roll with the punches, which is what you need in a detective. Both literally, and inside your head: you gotta know when something you thought all your life might not be true, like, also to pick an example entirely at random, when a pretty blonde girl and a drifter guy with anchor tattoos and a grizzled beard go into a dark Chicago alley, which one's the victim.

So this is maybe the third time he and Fraser have done... well. Have done that, and ain't it stupid, that he's still Fraser in Ray's head, but, hell, Fraser is Fraser, and a little mad, and bottomlessly bright, and his partner, the guy he's beginning to think he's always known, in some way or another; Ben will take some time to get used to, which they've got. They were out all day from early till way late when the summer sun was turning the sky over the lake red and the air was starting to feel like you could breathe it again rather than build bricks out of the humidity. They'd got their perp - so pretty, so blonde, so many knives hidden in the spaces of those boots - and afterwards Ray said, tentatively, "Hey, you wanna..."

And Fraser turned to him, looked at all softly and intensely with something very sweet in his expression, and said, "I'd love to, Ray."

Afterwards Ray fell asleep all wound up in the sheets and dreamed, like he always does when he's fallen asleep in Fraser's bed on a hot and sticky Chicago night. He dreamed of Canada, though he's never been to the far north Fraser tells him about, never ridden a sled or felt his feet crunch into rough ice. Before now he's figured that that's Fraser, that that's Ben - he's getting to know the shape of Fraser's body and the shape of this new thing they're working out between them, and inside his head he's getting to know the inside of Fraser's head. It makes sense that in his dreams he's seeing the wide open spaces that Fraser carries around with him everywhere, inside his head. It makes sense to dream of snow, and wake up suddenly from the dream because some guy out on the street below just had a disagreement with some other guy and that guy's car at ass fucking o'clock in the morning.

Right now Ray is standing in the bathroom, a little light creeping in from the shaded window, sodium-yellow, leaning on the sink edge, on the porcelain slightly warmed by this sweltering warm soup of a night. His other hand is in his own hair, feeling the roughness on his scalp, and the chill. He brings his hands together and watches the snow melt in his cupped palms. Right now Ray is looking through the open door to the bed, to what he can see of Fraser in the dull light, and thinking, this is another one of those punches: this is another thing you gotta roll with, another thing to knock you off balance like everything you ever believed or knew might not be right or true, another thing like falling in love.

[jamjar]

Just spotted this on Monday morning, but if you're still taking prompts: Haven, Nathan, Audrey, Duke and "lullaby".

[raven]

Still taking prompts, but alas I don't know who these people are. Anything else?

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Cabin Pressure, anyone, truth or dare.

Or:

Vorkosigan saga, Cordelia, Alys and Ekaterin, slice of life (or whatever you want).

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

(I suspect this little snip is secretly part of something longer)

"Will you take some more tea, Alys?" Ekaterin was asking, and Cordelia was noting to herself that they were finally on first-name terms when distracted by the sound of something crashing into something else in the hallway outside.

"It's amazing," she was muttering, "how I immediately want to run out there and shout, 'Miles!' even though I know Miles is currently en route to Komarr and also thirty-five years old" - but the door opened before she reached it.

"Look what I found on my way out," Simon said, quietly. "Wandering around in the entrance hall. She had a little dispute with a vase."

"Simon?" Alys said, turning, "who..."

The child he was balancing on his hip was around three or four, with big brown eyes, ringlets, and a decidedly curious expression. Cordelia had an image in her mind's eye of Simon thirty years younger, carrying Miles or Gregor in just the same way, back when she'd wandered this house and still got lost. From the faintly amused look, he knew what she was thinking. "There is a further wrinkle," he said. "Tell them what you just told me, sweetheart."

"I'm lost," said the little girl simply, but Cordelia turned sharply at the flat Betan vowels.

"You're a long way from home, little one," she said, taking the little girl from him. "Simon, I'm pleased your talents for interrogation remain with you."

Simon saluted her gravely and withdrew. As if a spell had been broken, Ekaterin drew closer. "Shall I ask why we have a lost little girl from Beta Colony in our front hall?"

"Sounds like a fairy tale," Cordelia murmured. "Sweetie, where's your ma? What's her name? Can you tell me your arcology number?" She glanced up at Ekaterin and Alys. "Do they even teach them that in Betan kindergartens any more?" After a pause, she added, "I'm a long way from home, too."

The little girl regarded her impassively. "Cordelia," Alys said, "shall I... you know, I don't think I've done this since Ivan was this age. Dear, would you like something to eat?"

The little girl held out a hand obligingly for one of Ma Kosti's pastries, and Alys clicked her tongue. "Careful, you'll get it on your pretty frock. What will your ma say when we give you back to her all messy?"

"Speaking of which," Ekaterin said.

"I think we needn't call ImpSec," Cordelia put in. "Surely the municipal authorities can deal with a lost child.

Before either could answer, the door opened again. "Excuse me, have you seen..."

The woman was breathless and panicky and wearing something that was studiedly conservative by Betan fashions and positively scandalous for Barrayar. Cordelia grinned. "I take it we have something of yours?"

"I am so sorry! I just turned my back for a moment, and she - your partner told me he'd found - I'm sorry, the tour, oh, Lily..."

"Perhaps you'd better sit down," Ekaterin said, and quietly led the woman to a chair. The little girl - Lily, Cordelia thought - seemed more preoccupied by her tiny strawberry tart, but submitted to her mother's embrace.

"The tour guide," the woman said, incoherently, "he was giving a speech, about this house, and its signifcance in this planet's history, and... oh, dear, you're Cordelia Vorkosigan. And you..."

Alys said, with the tone of someone taking control of a situation, "Ekaterin, perhaps I should ask for more tea. Madam, I don't believe any of us can offer you a potted history of Vorbarr Sultana as comprehensive as the one you're missing, but we'll do our best."

Cordelia said, suddenly, "You have a Sillica accent. I - well, I grew up there, once upon a time."

"It's very different," the woman offered, after a second. She still looked a little shell-shocked.

"From here, or from then?" Ekaterin asked suddenly, and Cordelia glanced sharply at her.

"Both, I suppose," she said. "Still. Nothing like Barrayaran hospitality."

"No, indeed," Alys said, and placed a hand on Cordelia's shoulder on her way to ring for the tea.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Have you seen STID? If so, I would *love* some Carol/Christine (or Carol & Christine, if you don't ship them). Truth or dare?

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I'm a sucker for apocalyptic/distopian fic...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Me too! Which fandom? Remind me which ones you like...

[lauds.livejournal.com]

West Wing, apocalypse? Or Uhura, family.

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

I feel like you may have written this already, but I like it and it seems to suit the fandoms, so: Cabin Pressure and/or Star Trek, competence is sexy (literally or otherwise). Oh! Alternatively, Uhura gets mixed up in Cornell linguistics department politics.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Alas, I know little of Cornell linguistics dept politics - I was at the law school there; perhaps a different flavour of politics - but I once combined competence, Star Trek and Cabin Pressure into A Short History of Aviation (http://archiveofourown.org/works/472638).

That said, I'm going to cheat a little here and give you a snippet from a Cabin Pressure story I may or may not finish one of these days, that hangs quite well off the competence-is-sexy hook.


They leave Nowhere, Nova Scotia just after sunset, so the last of the natural light is fading. Douglas is pleased: he wouldn't admit to the sentimental side of it in front of the others, but he likes night flights; he likes the sense of the world closing in to just himself, his first officer and his aircraft.

First officer, though. He sighs, looks across at Martin, who actually looks perkier than he's been recently, although with no hat. He's operating out tonight, murmuring softly to ATC. "Cleared for take-off."

"Good." Douglas echoes him and talks quietly into the cabin intercom. "Arthur, Carolyn? Cross-check?"

"Let's go, Skipper!" comes Arthur's voice sepulchrally from the cabin.

"First officer," Douglas murmurs, and then, louder: "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered."

"Hamlet." Martin looks across at him. "And it's not the first line."

"Humour me," Douglas tells him. And then they're moving. He leans forward, instinctively, and the landscape blurs, the ground speed indicator rising, rising, a hundred, a hundred and fifty….

Then – something. Something large, something with enormous, mad eyes, out on the runway, right in front of them and growing more huge by the second.

"Jesus fucking Christ." Douglas can't breathe. "Moose!"

"Fuck," Martin squawks, and puts his hand on the control column.

"No," Douglas says, eyes on ground speed, "not enough, no, Martin, no…"

Martin pulls back. Douglas breathes in and closes his eyes and clenches his fists and breathes –

- and they're flying. For the last moment Douglas still thinks they'll clip – the bulk of the thing is all menacing shadow below – and then open space, open air.

"Christ," Douglas says. Martin has gone pale. Gertie begins to turn, flattening out into her flight path as smooth and easy as a kiss. They're climbing into the clear sky above the ocean, with the airfield a jewel box of lights spread out below. "Golf Tango India, come in, Golf Tango India!" the radio is shrieking.

Douglas grabs at it and shouts, "Yes, control, was there something you wanted to tell us?" but the effect is ruined by the hysterical note underneath. "Martin, if anyone ever tells you, ever, that you can't, that you shouldn't fly…"

"Boys?" It's Carolyn's voice, sounding a little faint. "Boys, are you all right in there?"

"We're fine," Martin says. He sounds absolutely calm.

Carolyn says, "If we'd had passengers with no seatbelts on, they would have hit the roof like a tonne of bricks hitting the, well, the ground. Not that would necessarily have been a bad thing."

"Oh, look," Arthur calls. "We smashed all our miniatures. Whisky in everything."

"Skipper," Douglas says. The word tastes unfamiliar in his mouth. "You…"

Martin smiles and cuts him off. "All my sins remembered, Douglas?"

"I am turning into a romantic in my old age," Douglas grouses. "Apparently imminent near-death experiences bring it out in me."

"Me, too." Martin grins. "Nymph."

"Oh, shut up."

Below them, the sea stretches out. Douglas wonders how many crashed aircraft it's hiding, and they fly on.