Work in Progress Wednesday!

[tjs_whatnot]

Wednesdays man, they're like the Black Hole of the week.

Remind me that I need to update this journal with RL going ons sometime soon, k?

But for now, WORKS IN PROGRESS!

Give 'em to me! Read and encourage others!

I swear I will have something to share this week! I gotta sift through my files and find something (ANYTHING!) That has promise,

P.S. People reading this on LiveJournal, if I don't comment over there, ping me. I sometimes don't get notified, and it's so quiet over there, that I forget. :(

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

I've been blocked, but I had this idea for the next fluffbingo story on the way home from work, and I came home and wrote 1,700 words. I'd like to finish it tonight, but it's getting late and I have work tomorrow, so I need to get to bed. (Stupid work...)

"Thomas is on Betazed."

"Thomas who?"

"Thomas Riker, your...I think we decided brother was the least fraught way to describe it."

Will scrubbed at his face. "Right. Him." He frowned and looked up at the ceiling. "I guess it's nice to know he's alive." He didn't exactly like the fact that there was a transporter duplicate of himself running around the galaxy, but that didn't mean he wanted the man dead either. "What's he doing on Betazed?"

Deanna shifted in her chair. "He was with my mother. On a date."

"What?!"

"That's the rumor," Deanna said quickly. "Riv Melar saw them at Beynar's Walk."

Will shook his head and laughed a little. "No. I refuse to believe it. Just because Beynar's Walk is the cliche date night destination for half of the city doesn't mean that everyone who goes there is on a date."

"Riv said they kissed. He thought it was you, and told Selmara, and Selmara told Gensar, and Gensar called me to ask what my husband was doing making out with my mother, and I told her that my husband was with me, four hundred light years from Betazed, and then I thought of Tom, and it...clicked."

Will stared at her. "Are you telling me that my mother-in-law is romantically involved with my...duplicate self?"

Deanna shrugged. "I'm saying that's the rumor." She had herself closed off from him, but Will could read her even without their empathic connection, and he could see in the tension in her shoulders and the way her hands were clasped in her lap that there was a part of her that was afraid it was true.

Will tapped his comm badge. "Riker to bridge. I need a priority subspace channel to Betazed right away."

"Aye sir."

"You know you're only allowed to use priority subspace channels for official ship's business."

"This is ship's business," Will countered. "It's important to the ship to have a functional captain, and this captain isn't going to be able to focus on anything else until he finds out if his life has in fact turned into an Andorian dramatic serial."

[cornerofmadness]

here's more of Like Stone (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series X-over). Still Connor's pov still the night of the nightmare

But that murder (the death of the serial killer who killed his girlfriend, see last week) was the first thread and like many things, one good pull on a string and everything unravels. I started having dreams of vampires and women with maggoty heads. I thought I had had another nervous breakdown. Quickly enough, the spell snapped completely and I was myself once more. And I have hated my father ever since for trying to erase my existence. Despite everything since then, all he’s tried to do for me, I have remained like stone, unmoving, unforgiving.

I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even midnight. Today was my day off so I had been in bed early but that had come to an end with that dream. It was time to find a little help getting through the night. After Amber Rose’s death, I turned to Wes. He helped me readjust, helped me reestablish my identity. Connor Connolly might have been a lie but something about that experience helped me not descend into the madness I had suffered before it. Maybe because I remembered having a family and realized it wasn’t the cure-all I had thought it would be. I still suffered, and continue to suffer, from loneliness and depression, the sense of total alienation but being Connolly had allowed me to cope.

But no one remember Connolly. No one recalled a lot of things, especially in the days during and just after the Beast’s rain of fire and Jasmine. No one really recollected a crazed kid taking over a mall. Even I had no clear memories of that, more due to the fugue caused by my descent into madness or something close to it. So many deaths had happened during the rain of fire that one blonde little girl’s murder had been forgotten. Only I remembered kidnaping her, letting Cordelia slaughter her. I’ve only told three other people, Wesley, Kate and Faith. Faith took it to her grave.

[elrhiarhodan]

Had a choice on which WIP to share with you lovely people this week. I'd set aside the project I'd shared with you last week and started on one of the two Reverse Bangs I signed up for (and have made good progress on), but I'm not ready to share that one yet (it's completely AU and would require a peek at the artwork for it to make sense), so here's a bit more from the other thing, a Kingsman AU that's canon adjacent (Seb is an OC, fancast as Richard Madden, who's co-starring with Taron Egerton in Rocketman).

Tea with Arthur is the height of weirdness. Because it's Harry, his da's husband and one of the most delightfully weird people he's ever met – with the butterflies and insects in shadowboxes on his wall and the dead dog in the loo.

But that Harry isn't anything like Arthur, head of Kingsman, who sits in an office that wouldn't be out of place in a royal palace. He's stern but welcoming and he's clearly enjoys giving Seb the speech about what it means to work for Kingsman, how the people behind the scenes are just as important as the agents in the field. Arthur talks extensively about the work that R&D does, the spy gadgets and gizmos as well as the advancements in cyber-technology, AI, encryption, and even medical advancements.

He gives Seb a chance to ask questions and answers them with a frankness that stuns Seb to the core. It's only when the second pot of tea is drained and Seb's bladder is screaming that he realizes that they've been talking for almost two hours. "My apologizes, sir. I have taken up far too much of yer time."

"No, you haven't. It's always a delight to see such enthusiasm. And your curiosity will serve you well here."

"Thank ye. Merlin's not given me any concrete details on what I'm to be working on, but I thought I'd ask, is there anything that ye would want for the agents?"

Arthur raises an eyebrow at that question and Seb wants to kick himself for seriously overstepping the line.

"There are always things I want for my agents, but project budgets aren't infinite and priorities are set with the Quartermaster. But thank you for asking. Perhaps when you get your feet under yourself and see what's in the pipeline, you can have that conversation with Merlin. He is always open to new ideas and anything that can help an agent in the field or make back office support easier is always welcome."

Certain his face is flaming red, Seb says that he'll do just that, and the meeting comes to an awkward end with a tap on the door. It's Merlin, and it occurs to Seb that Merlin has probably been monitoring the whole meeting.

Seb bids Arthur a good afternoon and Arthur again welcomes him to Kingsman, but Seb feels like there's something wrong – more than just his foolish request. Or maybe he's just projecting from what Merlin had told him on the ride from Glasgow, that he and Harry are having some problems.

Outside, in the hall, Seb asks, "Did I cock it up big time?"

Merlin smiles and tacitly acknowledges that he had been listening in. "No, ye're in an awkward position and frankly, Arthur crossed some lines, too. These meetings barely last a half-hour. The two of ye were talking business for four times that. I'm actually surprised that Arthur didn't ask ye for the flying car he's wanted since we first met, in '87."

"Aerodynamically impractical and a safety nightmare for everyone."

"That's what I've been saying for almost forty years, but maybe he'll listen to you."

Seb nods. "If he asks, I break it to him gently."

"Arthur – and Harry – generally responds best with a punch to the face."

Seb doesn't think his da is kidding in the least.

[tjs_whatnot]

Since I haven't any fanfic in the works right now--not really, not anything that I'm writing on the regulaar--I thought I'd share some original that I would like to finish sometime in the near(ish) future. Any thoughts or suggestions welcome:

Story is called "Laundry Day" and it's a short(ish) story about loss and finding the missing pieces in the most unlikeliest of places.

With one hip, Irene held the back screen door open. The laundry basket bent over the curve of the other hip, the plastic digging into the flesh. She didn’t even notice as she clutched the clothes pins in the free hand, blowing the sweaty hair so that she could see. It didn’t work but she hadn’t really expected it to. With a sigh she walked out of the cooler air of the house and the loud drone of the fans and into the quiet and oppressive heat of a West Texas July.

Life since Tom's death had been lived in steps and routines, with no thought and certainly no feelings. It had a new timeline, a new marker-- before Tom's death and after. The everyday actions of it weren't too much different except before was called a life and after was called enduring. Before, mindless chores had been done while daydreaming of a limitless future. After, mindless chores were done while thinking of a past that felt like they had happened to someone else.

As she hung the faded beach towels in slow and practiced repetition she thought of the beach, she and Tom had talked of going in with friends for a place in San Pedro. They talked about it every summer when they went for that one weekend they could afford. It was a delusion, of course, but it didn't stop Tom's fairy tale planning, or for her to get swept away in the illusion.

"What about a place like this?" Tom asked.

They were walking along the beach, holding hands, looking at the houses high on the cliffs.

She looked at the mammoth house and nudged into him. "Be serious."

"Oh? We're being serious now?"

She smiled. "I guess not, but even dreams should have limits of some sort, no? To be slightly believable and seemingly attainable?"

"Perhaps you're right, darling. Perhaps." He put his arm around her. She snuggled into his shoulder. The wind had picked up and her cover up and her long hair whipped around them.

Half a mile down the beach she stopped them and pointed to a bungalow on top of a dune. "Now, that could be our dream house."

He squeezed her shoulder. "Even in this lifetime too. Good eye."

She continued to think of their seaside moments as she continued hanging the bedding, towels, clothes: shirts, pants, scrubs, panties. Then she reached for a new piece of cloth and brought it to the line before freezing, a chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the wind.

Tom's boxers.

[silveradept]

One WIP that I can talk about, so here's more from it.

"There's something over there that looks weird," he said, noncomitally, looking to see if there was something he could distract Marinette with. He spun around, looking for Mayura, but if she had been there, there wasn't a trace of it now. When had she--?

"Okay," Marinette said, her face abruptly shifting from sweet to unsettlingly determined. "I wanted to be sure that I wasn't dreaming when I beat the tar out of Lila."

"Lila?" he said.

"Adrien," she said, cracking her knuckles in contrast to her cheerful voice, "don't you see? Lila's right in front of us. And she's going to regret whatever scheme she has cooked up this time."

He peered more closely at the inkblot creature. This one could pass as Lila if he squinted, he supposed, but Marinette was marching up to it like she fully intended to put it in the hospital with her fists.

The inkblot took the first swing. Marinette caught the punch in her right hand and connected with the other, sending the inkblot bouncing over the sidewalk.

He snapped his jaw shut, realizng staring wasn't going to help fix the rapidly-developing problem. He had never known Marinette to be particularly violent about anyone before now. Except Lila, he realized, where Marinette was a powder keg waiting for a match. She hated liars, and Lila couldn't tell the truth even if it would save her life.

It didn't help that Lila also triggered jealous reactions in everyone who thought they had a stake in being Adrien Agreste's petite-amie. He'd kept an eye on how things were progressing, because it could always end in an akuma attack, but he'd tried his best to stay out of giving anyone encouragement or validation on that front. He hadn't realized that Marinette's clumsiness and inability to string together sentences might have been because she liked him in that way. He'd thought she was just shy, and it expressed itself in painfully cute ways.

Marinette was anything but cute, however, as she blocked a clumsy punch from the inkblot and landed a one-two combination in retaliation that he recognized as one of Nora Césaire's openers from her last fight. Had the inkblot stayed within range, Adrien had a feeling Marinette would have gone for the uppercut that usually followed.

Either Marinette had an eidetic memory for highlight clips (which he had been watching over their shoulders as Alya showed Marinette before class), or she had been learning how to box from a professional. He wondered when Marinette had time to learn how to fight like that.