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When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
La Vie Pensee -- SGA, aka the Rent AU
It all seemed a bit fishy to Rodney. John was a pretty enough sort of person, in that lanky, artfully scruffy GQ way, a careless mishmash of Venice Beach casual and Manhattan sleek, and Radek Zelenka...was an extremely talented engineer with thick glasses and a tendency to blunder into walls when John smiled at him. Some deeply buried romantic portion of Rodney’s soul liked the idea that the easy way the two of them connected when they talked about angles and force and acceleration really could translate into...whatever, but the part of Rodney that had been alive on the Earth for thirty years knew that it never really worked out that way, and when their constant flirting hit the inevitable wall, he knew which one would end up with his heart splattered all over Avenue A.
And Rodney needed Radek – Arcturus needed him. Also, it just...sucked.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” John said.
“Who doesn’t like you?” Rodney scoffed. “You’re the JFK of the engineering world. You’re a rock star.”
“I like how you make that sound like an insult,” John said casually. “That’s a real gift you got there, McKay.”
But insulting John didn’t work, and mocking Radek didn’t work, and nothing really worked, until sheer desperation drove Rodney to actual honesty. John was smoking a cigarette on the fire escape, all soft-worn jeans and black t-shirt and leather jacket and leaning over the railing like a damn billboard model, and when Radek stood up from the table with his pen still clutched in his hand and started across the room with a terrifyingly determined look in his eyes, Rodney abruptly said, “Don’t.” Radek looked back at him, and by that point he felt morally committed. “Don’t do it,” he sighed, rolling his shoulders until his neck popped. “He’s too – he won’t – “
“You don’t know that,” Radek said.
Wonderland Sentinel (16 Instinctive Behaviors series)
Blair split open a dinner roll, and for a moment he was distracted by trying to navigate the cold butter without mashing his bread senseless. "Yeah," he said when he caught back up to the conversation, "yeah, I was just trying to figure out what your game is, here."
"Why does it have to be a game?"
"I don't know, it's just hinkey, the whole thing."
"Hinkey?"
"First of all, I can't help but notice how you've got the power dynamic all set up here-- "
"No, I figure you probably can't help it."
"I mean, you have the tux, I'm in my workout clothes, so you know, if you're dressed for the occasion and I'm not, then suddenly it's your turf, not to mention that clearly it sets you up to be the much better-looking one."
"In fairness to me, I was really going to be the much better-looking one no matter-- "
"Hey," Blair said, and pointed the butter knife at him menacingly. "Watch it, there, Fabio."
Common SGA, OT4
“Do you have something that helps you make decisions?” he asked Sheppard. “Hard decisions?”
Sheppard thought about it a minute. “Not really,” he said. “You have to go with your gut.”
“But what if...?” Ronon didn’t know how to end that sentence, exactly. He only knew that if his gut weren’t telling him twenty different things constantly, he wouldn’t be having this problem to start with.
Sheppard leaned back on his hands, looking thoughtful and a little sunburned from that day’s trip to the mainland. “Sometimes I flip a coin,” Sheppard said. Ronon thought he was kidding, and snorted. “I flipped a coin on whether to come to Atlantis.”
“You lie.”
“I swear.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Sheppard shrugged. “You can’t argue with success.”
“I can argue with stupid,” Ronon said, finding himself pissed off and retroactively afraid at the mere idea of life with no Sheppard, of a universe where Sheppard’s coin fell upside-down and he stayed in his own galaxy. It was crazy that all this could depend on blind luck – Ronon’s life, his new home, his second chance, his feelings for....
Oh. Okay, then.
“You need to borrow a quarter?” Sheppard asked.
“No,” Ronon said, and grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him hard.
4. No and Yes BtVS, sort of Willow/Tara, sort of gen
“UC Sunnydale,” she says, and then when the silence is terrible – more terrible than usual -- when the silence is terrifying – she adds a hopeful, “Go Panthers!”
Her father gets up and leaves the room. Her mother half-turns in her chair, hand braced on the back of it to watch him go, and Willow takes the opportunity to sit down before her knees give out.
“Is this what you want?” her mother asks. Just like that – there’s a moment when Willow looks up from her hands twisted together on her lap and expects to see – what? Concern? Care? Love, maybe? Expects, from the question, to see her mom’s keen grey eyes turned on her searchingly, all of her mother’s gigantic intellect and her acumen when it came to human nature turned toward the problem of...that. Of what her daughter wants.
What she sees is storm-cloud grey. What she sees is strong, ugly lines around her mother’s mouth, the only punishment her mother has ever leveled at her: refusal. Willow opens her mouth to answer, but there’s no breath inside her. She closes her mouth and nods her head, feeling the tears start to pool up in her eyes. “Is this what you want?” her mother repeats, louder and sharper. “To disappoint your father? To throw away your opportunities? Would you feel as if you’ve had your revenge on us for what you perceive as our negligence, if you spit back everything we did try to give you? Or maybe you simply don’t care anymore. Maybe you’ve allowed all your intellectual curiosity to rot out from under you, maybe you prefer – malls and fraternity parties and selling band t-shirts to keep your boyfriend in guitar strings and pot? Is that what you want now, is that who you are now?”
That’s right, Mom, she should say. That’s exactly who I am. Probably shouldn’t have sent me to public school after all, should you?
That’s what she should say.
5. Insomniac popslash, Justin/Trace
He felt like shit the next morning, so he wore his sunglasses and his iPod down to breakfast. Nobody bothered him. Even Justin, when he came and stood beside Trace over the pastry table, didn’t say anything. Justin wrapped a napkin around the tongs so he didn’t have to touch the metal directly as he used them to pick through the arrangement for the perfect danish. Trace picked one up with his hands just to be annoying.
By that night, though, he didn’t want to be annoying anymore. He rode back to the hotel in Justin’s limo, watching Justin lean against the tinted window, the yellow dome light showing how the concealer under his eyes was smudging away, leaving streaks of makeup and glimpses of dark circles. “You want me to come up with you?” Trace said quietly.
Justin opened his eyes and looked at him for a long time, and his voice was scratchy and strained when he said, “I– Only if you want. I mean, you’re welcome to. If you want. It’s just that I can’t promise you....”
“Can’t promise me what?” Trace asked when Justin didn’t seem to be able to finish.
“Anything,” Justin said, leaning his head back against the leather seat. “That it won’t happen again. That it...will happen again.”
“Did I ask you to promise anything?” Trace said.
“You’d be easier to figure out if you did ask for stuff sometimes.”
Trace had never thought of himself as hard to figure out before. “I’m good where I am,” he said.
6. Dancing Barefoot SGA, Teyla-centric, multiple pairings
“I understand that it is a city of warriors. My child will also be a warrior.”
“Your child will be a child! He should be – getting crayon on the walls and wearing little footy-pajamas with rabbit ears at Halloween and pissing people off at nice restaurants! Where do you get off bringing a totally helpless, tiny little person into the middle of a fucking crisis situation? Do you even realize that all that does is add that much more onto the heads of my guys, who are already working night and day to keep this place safe and scared to death that someone’s going to get hurt on their watch? Now you want them not just to watch each other’s backs, but to have babies to worry about, too? How fucking selfish is that, just because you want to play house in the middle of a war zone?”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she said, resenting the quiver in her voice, “for you and your people, this may be a crisis situation. I am an Athosian. My mother delivered her child under threat of attack by the Wraith. So did her mother, and her mother before her. I am not playing house. I am living.”
He glared at her, trying to take full advantage of his extra height. She glared back, with no intention of moving a step. Dr. McKay edged between them as far as he could and said, “Colonel, we should really go now....”
“You have no right to dump the responsibility for a kid in my lap,” he said.
“You are a fool if you think you will be allowed to speak in such a way about my child.”
“Are you gonna get Ronon to beat me up?” he mocked.
“I think you know I can do that myself.”
“Yeah? For how much longer? Because we’re losing you, aren’t we, Teyla?” Perhaps it was meant to be said in the same edged, provoking manner as the rest of his diatribe, but his forehead wrinkled and his eyes suddenly looked forlorn as he said it, as if he had quite literally lost her and could not remember where to search.
7. Older and Far Away SGA, Ronon/Melena, Ronon/Teyla
The MP’s walked him back to the showers to rinse off and put on fresh pants, then disinfected and bandaged his wrists, all without speaking a word. Ronon didn’t say anything, either. He wouldn’t apologize. He wouldn’t apologize, not even if the Marke himself ordered it; he’d rather be discharged, or go to prison.
The Marke’s office was drafty because of a half-opened window; the Marke stood beside it to smoke, dropping his ashes in the dead grass outside. The MP’s left Ronon there, and the Marke gestured vaguely for him to sit in the chair across the desk – vague gestures were all Ronon could make out in the dim lamplight of the room. He put his sore hands cautiously on the arms of the chair and waited until the Marke had finished his cigar and thrown the butt outside. “So I’m curious,” the Marke said, his gravelly voice strangely cheerful. “Your mother, your girl, or your ass?” Ronon spent a shocked second trying to decipher the question, until the Marke snorted slightly and said, “The third one, then. It’s always one of the three.”
“Second,” Ronon said quickly. “It was...the second.”
The Marke nodded slowly. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s just, you don’t know how boring this job can get, and nobody ever brings me any decent gossip. Aren’t you going to ask how he’s doing?” It hadn’t really occurred to Ronon, actually. He shrugged, and the Marke made a soft, thoughtful noise. “You can hold a grudge, can’t you, boy?” he said, not quite a criticism. “Some men would be satisfied after that much. You broke his nose, which is nothing, that’ll heal. But you tore his retina, too. He probably won’t see out of his left eye again. Still angry?”
Ronon took the question seriously and didn’t rush his answer. “Yes,” he finally said. “Kind of.”
The Lily Maid of Atlantis aka Bride of Ronon, aka the story that's eating my life right now, Ronon/OFC
The dark-haired man smiled at her and tugged at the straps of the two small bags Ronon carried over one arm. When he smiled, he did not seem fierce at all, and Orah was less sure why she had feared him at first glance. “Looks like you’re staying a while, so tell you what,” he said. “Let’s find you a room while Ronon talks to– “
“My room,” Ronon said. “Her things go in my room. Orah, this is Colonel Sheppard. He’s the ranking officer in Atlantis, so if he tells you to do something, do it.”
“That’d be new around here,” the Colonel said. “Let the kid have her own room, Ronon. Whatever trouble you’re getting her out of, I doubt you have to watch her every second of every– “
Ronon took Orah by the hand again and started for the stairs. She almost forgot to start walking with him, until he’d pulled her arm taut and she had to stumble to catch up. “She’s not in trouble,” Ronon said. “She’s my wife.”
From behind them, the man who had not seemed interested in her at all until that moment, said, “She’s your what?” in a shrill voice. “Excuse me, you have a what?”
Orah could hear their steps behind her, but she was busy trying to keep up with Ronon as he took the stairs two at a time. She could hear Teyla’s quiet voice, indistinctly, and the hiss of the man’s voice. “She’s practically a baby!” Orah could hear him say; he sounded genuinely shocked. “She’s – what is she, fifteen, sixteen? You’re telling me this is legal where he– “
“I’m telling you to shut the hell up, Rodney,” the Colonel growled.
There was a wordless beat, and then Rodney said, “She’s pretty, though. Figures she’d be– oh, but – no, I mean, not as – no, wait. Oh, goddammit.”
“Rodney,” the woman said in the same weary, chiding tone that Aunt Jitta used when trying to keep the girls from some mischief she knew they would find a way into anyhow.
“I know, I know, I know,” he said glumly.
All my other WIPs worth quoting are REALLY, REALLY old, and hence on the old computer and I can't get to them easily. Because clearly, what I need is more to work on.
La Vie Pensee -- SGA, aka the Rent AU
It all seemed a bit fishy to Rodney. John was a pretty enough sort of person, in that lanky, artfully scruffy GQ way, a careless mishmash of Venice Beach casual and Manhattan sleek, and Radek Zelenka...was an extremely talented engineer with thick glasses and a tendency to blunder into walls when John smiled at him. Some deeply buried romantic portion of Rodney’s soul liked the idea that the easy way the two of them connected when they talked about angles and force and acceleration really could translate into...whatever, but the part of Rodney that had been alive on the Earth for thirty years knew that it never really worked out that way, and when their constant flirting hit the inevitable wall, he knew which one would end up with his heart splattered all over Avenue A.
And Rodney needed Radek – Arcturus needed him. Also, it just...sucked.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” John said.
“Who doesn’t like you?” Rodney scoffed. “You’re the JFK of the engineering world. You’re a rock star.”
“I like how you make that sound like an insult,” John said casually. “That’s a real gift you got there, McKay.”
But insulting John didn’t work, and mocking Radek didn’t work, and nothing really worked, until sheer desperation drove Rodney to actual honesty. John was smoking a cigarette on the fire escape, all soft-worn jeans and black t-shirt and leather jacket and leaning over the railing like a damn billboard model, and when Radek stood up from the table with his pen still clutched in his hand and started across the room with a terrifyingly determined look in his eyes, Rodney abruptly said, “Don’t.” Radek looked back at him, and by that point he felt morally committed. “Don’t do it,” he sighed, rolling his shoulders until his neck popped. “He’s too – he won’t – “
“You don’t know that,” Radek said.
Wonderland Sentinel (16 Instinctive Behaviors series)
Blair split open a dinner roll, and for a moment he was distracted by trying to navigate the cold butter without mashing his bread senseless. "Yeah," he said when he caught back up to the conversation, "yeah, I was just trying to figure out what your game is, here."
"Why does it have to be a game?"
"I don't know, it's just hinkey, the whole thing."
"Hinkey?"
"First of all, I can't help but notice how you've got the power dynamic all set up here-- "
"No, I figure you probably can't help it."
"I mean, you have the tux, I'm in my workout clothes, so you know, if you're dressed for the occasion and I'm not, then suddenly it's your turf, not to mention that clearly it sets you up to be the much better-looking one."
"In fairness to me, I was really going to be the much better-looking one no matter-- "
"Hey," Blair said, and pointed the butter knife at him menacingly. "Watch it, there, Fabio."
Common SGA, OT4
“Do you have something that helps you make decisions?” he asked Sheppard. “Hard decisions?”
Sheppard thought about it a minute. “Not really,” he said. “You have to go with your gut.”
“But what if...?” Ronon didn’t know how to end that sentence, exactly. He only knew that if his gut weren’t telling him twenty different things constantly, he wouldn’t be having this problem to start with.
Sheppard leaned back on his hands, looking thoughtful and a little sunburned from that day’s trip to the mainland. “Sometimes I flip a coin,” Sheppard said. Ronon thought he was kidding, and snorted. “I flipped a coin on whether to come to Atlantis.”
“You lie.”
“I swear.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Sheppard shrugged. “You can’t argue with success.”
“I can argue with stupid,” Ronon said, finding himself pissed off and retroactively afraid at the mere idea of life with no Sheppard, of a universe where Sheppard’s coin fell upside-down and he stayed in his own galaxy. It was crazy that all this could depend on blind luck – Ronon’s life, his new home, his second chance, his feelings for....
Oh. Okay, then.
“You need to borrow a quarter?” Sheppard asked.
“No,” Ronon said, and grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him hard.
4. No and Yes BtVS, sort of Willow/Tara, sort of gen
“UC Sunnydale,” she says, and then when the silence is terrible – more terrible than usual -- when the silence is terrifying – she adds a hopeful, “Go Panthers!”
Her father gets up and leaves the room. Her mother half-turns in her chair, hand braced on the back of it to watch him go, and Willow takes the opportunity to sit down before her knees give out.
“Is this what you want?” her mother asks. Just like that – there’s a moment when Willow looks up from her hands twisted together on her lap and expects to see – what? Concern? Care? Love, maybe? Expects, from the question, to see her mom’s keen grey eyes turned on her searchingly, all of her mother’s gigantic intellect and her acumen when it came to human nature turned toward the problem of...that. Of what her daughter wants.
What she sees is storm-cloud grey. What she sees is strong, ugly lines around her mother’s mouth, the only punishment her mother has ever leveled at her: refusal. Willow opens her mouth to answer, but there’s no breath inside her. She closes her mouth and nods her head, feeling the tears start to pool up in her eyes. “Is this what you want?” her mother repeats, louder and sharper. “To disappoint your father? To throw away your opportunities? Would you feel as if you’ve had your revenge on us for what you perceive as our negligence, if you spit back everything we did try to give you? Or maybe you simply don’t care anymore. Maybe you’ve allowed all your intellectual curiosity to rot out from under you, maybe you prefer – malls and fraternity parties and selling band t-shirts to keep your boyfriend in guitar strings and pot? Is that what you want now, is that who you are now?”
That’s right, Mom, she should say. That’s exactly who I am. Probably shouldn’t have sent me to public school after all, should you?
That’s what she should say.
5. Insomniac popslash, Justin/Trace
He felt like shit the next morning, so he wore his sunglasses and his iPod down to breakfast. Nobody bothered him. Even Justin, when he came and stood beside Trace over the pastry table, didn’t say anything. Justin wrapped a napkin around the tongs so he didn’t have to touch the metal directly as he used them to pick through the arrangement for the perfect danish. Trace picked one up with his hands just to be annoying.
By that night, though, he didn’t want to be annoying anymore. He rode back to the hotel in Justin’s limo, watching Justin lean against the tinted window, the yellow dome light showing how the concealer under his eyes was smudging away, leaving streaks of makeup and glimpses of dark circles. “You want me to come up with you?” Trace said quietly.
Justin opened his eyes and looked at him for a long time, and his voice was scratchy and strained when he said, “I– Only if you want. I mean, you’re welcome to. If you want. It’s just that I can’t promise you....”
“Can’t promise me what?” Trace asked when Justin didn’t seem to be able to finish.
“Anything,” Justin said, leaning his head back against the leather seat. “That it won’t happen again. That it...will happen again.”
“Did I ask you to promise anything?” Trace said.
“You’d be easier to figure out if you did ask for stuff sometimes.”
Trace had never thought of himself as hard to figure out before. “I’m good where I am,” he said.
6. Dancing Barefoot SGA, Teyla-centric, multiple pairings
“I understand that it is a city of warriors. My child will also be a warrior.”
“Your child will be a child! He should be – getting crayon on the walls and wearing little footy-pajamas with rabbit ears at Halloween and pissing people off at nice restaurants! Where do you get off bringing a totally helpless, tiny little person into the middle of a fucking crisis situation? Do you even realize that all that does is add that much more onto the heads of my guys, who are already working night and day to keep this place safe and scared to death that someone’s going to get hurt on their watch? Now you want them not just to watch each other’s backs, but to have babies to worry about, too? How fucking selfish is that, just because you want to play house in the middle of a war zone?”
“Colonel Sheppard,” she said, resenting the quiver in her voice, “for you and your people, this may be a crisis situation. I am an Athosian. My mother delivered her child under threat of attack by the Wraith. So did her mother, and her mother before her. I am not playing house. I am living.”
He glared at her, trying to take full advantage of his extra height. She glared back, with no intention of moving a step. Dr. McKay edged between them as far as he could and said, “Colonel, we should really go now....”
“You have no right to dump the responsibility for a kid in my lap,” he said.
“You are a fool if you think you will be allowed to speak in such a way about my child.”
“Are you gonna get Ronon to beat me up?” he mocked.
“I think you know I can do that myself.”
“Yeah? For how much longer? Because we’re losing you, aren’t we, Teyla?” Perhaps it was meant to be said in the same edged, provoking manner as the rest of his diatribe, but his forehead wrinkled and his eyes suddenly looked forlorn as he said it, as if he had quite literally lost her and could not remember where to search.
7. Older and Far Away SGA, Ronon/Melena, Ronon/Teyla
The MP’s walked him back to the showers to rinse off and put on fresh pants, then disinfected and bandaged his wrists, all without speaking a word. Ronon didn’t say anything, either. He wouldn’t apologize. He wouldn’t apologize, not even if the Marke himself ordered it; he’d rather be discharged, or go to prison.
The Marke’s office was drafty because of a half-opened window; the Marke stood beside it to smoke, dropping his ashes in the dead grass outside. The MP’s left Ronon there, and the Marke gestured vaguely for him to sit in the chair across the desk – vague gestures were all Ronon could make out in the dim lamplight of the room. He put his sore hands cautiously on the arms of the chair and waited until the Marke had finished his cigar and thrown the butt outside. “So I’m curious,” the Marke said, his gravelly voice strangely cheerful. “Your mother, your girl, or your ass?” Ronon spent a shocked second trying to decipher the question, until the Marke snorted slightly and said, “The third one, then. It’s always one of the three.”
“Second,” Ronon said quickly. “It was...the second.”
The Marke nodded slowly. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s just, you don’t know how boring this job can get, and nobody ever brings me any decent gossip. Aren’t you going to ask how he’s doing?” It hadn’t really occurred to Ronon, actually. He shrugged, and the Marke made a soft, thoughtful noise. “You can hold a grudge, can’t you, boy?” he said, not quite a criticism. “Some men would be satisfied after that much. You broke his nose, which is nothing, that’ll heal. But you tore his retina, too. He probably won’t see out of his left eye again. Still angry?”
Ronon took the question seriously and didn’t rush his answer. “Yes,” he finally said. “Kind of.”
The Lily Maid of Atlantis aka Bride of Ronon, aka the story that's eating my life right now, Ronon/OFC
The dark-haired man smiled at her and tugged at the straps of the two small bags Ronon carried over one arm. When he smiled, he did not seem fierce at all, and Orah was less sure why she had feared him at first glance. “Looks like you’re staying a while, so tell you what,” he said. “Let’s find you a room while Ronon talks to– “
“My room,” Ronon said. “Her things go in my room. Orah, this is Colonel Sheppard. He’s the ranking officer in Atlantis, so if he tells you to do something, do it.”
“That’d be new around here,” the Colonel said. “Let the kid have her own room, Ronon. Whatever trouble you’re getting her out of, I doubt you have to watch her every second of every– “
Ronon took Orah by the hand again and started for the stairs. She almost forgot to start walking with him, until he’d pulled her arm taut and she had to stumble to catch up. “She’s not in trouble,” Ronon said. “She’s my wife.”
From behind them, the man who had not seemed interested in her at all until that moment, said, “She’s your what?” in a shrill voice. “Excuse me, you have a what?”
Orah could hear their steps behind her, but she was busy trying to keep up with Ronon as he took the stairs two at a time. She could hear Teyla’s quiet voice, indistinctly, and the hiss of the man’s voice. “She’s practically a baby!” Orah could hear him say; he sounded genuinely shocked. “She’s – what is she, fifteen, sixteen? You’re telling me this is legal where he– “
“I’m telling you to shut the hell up, Rodney,” the Colonel growled.
There was a wordless beat, and then Rodney said, “She’s pretty, though. Figures she’d be– oh, but – no, I mean, not as – no, wait. Oh, goddammit.”
“Rodney,” the woman said in the same weary, chiding tone that Aunt Jitta used when trying to keep the girls from some mischief she knew they would find a way into anyhow.
“I know, I know, I know,” he said glumly.
All my other WIPs worth quoting are REALLY, REALLY old, and hence on the old computer and I can't get to them easily. Because clearly, what I need is more to work on.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-04 12:41 am (UTC)From:while several of these sound fabulous, I completely and utterly fell for the Bride of Ronon story - any way you'd accept bribes to concentrate on it?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-04 10:45 am (UTC)From:Bride of Ronon is my current focus, and you don't even know how great it is to hear you say you're interested in that one, because it's been my running joke all along about how *insanely* self-indulgent and inaccessible this story is. I mean, you know? A hundred pages of OFC het fic about marriage? Fandom is so totally clamoring for *that!* I feel like I'll be lucky if I can press-gang ten people into actually sitting down and reading the damn thing when I'm done with it.
Seeing you pick it out of a lineup as something you actively *want* -- seriously, you have no idea how re-energized I feel now! Bless you!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-05 01:21 am (UTC)From:go, self-indulgence! is what I say