Jain

Fixing Things Friday

jain — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:55:15 GMT

This week I have...
--called my congressman and asked him to cosponsor the Presidential Accountability Act.
--called one of my senators and asked him to vote against Jeff Sessions's appointment to the position of Attorney General, on the grounds that Sessions can't be trusted to protect people's civil and political rights. (I tried to call my other senator, but he's not taking calls this week. So disappointed that we didn't manage to vote him out this year.)
--called the Department of Justice and asked them to investigate the human rights abuses by the Morton County Sheriff's Department against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
--subscribed to Mother Jones and The Guardian.

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Fixing Things Friday (or whatever we end up calling it)

jain — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 01:21:13 GMT

skygiants suggested that people do a variation on Reading Wednesdays that tracks our political actions for the week, both to inspire and inform each other and to keep ourselves accountable. Since I'm very much in favor of both of those goals, here's my list.

This week (and a half) I have...
-- donated to the National Resources Defense Council. (Their website has a new tagline: "Help us gear up to defend our environment and climate from the Trump presidency.")
-- donated to Foster Campbell, the Democratic candidate for Louisiana senator. Louisiana's runoff election will be held this December 10th.
-- called my congressman and one of my senators twice and my congressman-elect once to demand that they condemn Trump's selection of white nationalist Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist.
-- called my other senator once to thank him for his public condemnation of Steve Bannon and to ask him to do all he can to block Bannon's appointment.
-- called the House Oversight Committee to support an investigation into Trump's financial arrangements and conflicts of interest.
-- taken Paul Ryan's phone survey to register my approval of Obamacare. (Heads up that the silence you get when connecting to Ryan's system is super weird and disconcerting. The phone didn't ring even once; I just dialed and got instant silence, which I had to wait out for over a minute before the recorded message started playing.)
-- signed the whitehouse.gov petition requesting that Obama commute Chelsea Manning's sentence to time served.

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The election and the U.S. Senate

jain — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 04:32:55 GMT

Well, that was unspeakably devastating. Thank you to everyone who's posted their reactions and helpful links and general expressions of support in the aftermath of the election; I'm one of the many who really needed to see those. I've also seen an outpouring of donations from my DW/LJ friends to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and various local charities, which has been heartening. (I've donated to the National Resources Defense Council myself, because climate change was terrifying even before Trump was elected.)

In addition to those very worthy organizations, though, if you can spare the cash--and if you're a U.S. citizen or green card holder--please consider donating to Foster Campbell, the Democratic candidate for Louisiana senator who'll be advancing to that state's runoff election on December 10th.

The Republicans will maintain their Senate majority regardless of whether Campbell wins or loses; the only question is whether that majority will be 52-48 or 51-49. The latter is preferable to the former, even in the short term. But to truly understand the significance of this race, look at the map of Senate seats up for election in 2018. That's 33 contested Senate seats, only eight of them currently held by Republicans, and most of those Republican seats are in deep red states.

The chances of Democrats winning back the Senate during the midterm elections are painfully low. But conversely, the importance of preventing Republicans from becoming a supermajority in the Senate two years from now is very high. A Campbell victory would be step one towards preventing that outcome.

So donate to Campbell if you can, VOTE in the runoff election if you're a Louisianan, and just keep being the awesome people you are in general.

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Family, loss

jain — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:15:38 GMT

My father passed away last night. It wasn't at all unexpected: he'd been suffering from dementia for a long time and had declined very badly in the past year or so, and we placed him on hospice this August.

I don't know if his death still hasn't sunk in for me yet, or if it's that his illness was so long and protracted that I've already gotten a lot of my grieving over with, but I'm feeling mostly okay right now. As far as I can tell, the rest of the family is about the same--even my mother, who was very devoted to him and whose reaction we'd all been worrying about. I think it really helps that my brother, his gf, and my baby niece moved home recently; the baby has been a welcome distraction for all of us.

And because we knew this was coming, my three siblings who live far away were able to come see Dad before he died (two of them could take over a month off of work and are still here now, while my youngest sister had to go back for school but will return for the memorial). That's helped a bit, too, knowing that everyone had the chance to say goodbye to him.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier

jain — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 23:03:00 GMT

My expectations going into this movie for the first time were high, to say the least. (Seriously, my brother and I went to a matinee showing, and I woke up several times the night before because I was too excited to sleep. I was like a little kid on Christmas Eve; it was ridiculous.) And then The Winter Soldier surpassed pretty much all of my expectations.

Things I Loved that I Wasn't Expecting to Love

* Batroc the Leaper. I'd been spoiled for his presence in the film and been mildly unhappy about it, but then he ended up being kind of...cool? No ridiculous mustache, no goggle-eyed mask, no purple and gold pantsuit, a good reason for his being in the film in the first place, and an excellent fight scene. What's not to like? Plus, it's now movie canon that Steve speaks French. :-)

* When Zola started monologuing, I'll admit I rolled my eyes a bit. Only then it turned out that he was actually stalling for time, and all was forgiven. Especially since he's totally the type of character who'd enjoy a good villainous monologue, if the opportunity presented itself. It was a very clever way to impart all of that backstory, too; I was impressed by how relatively few flashbacks the film relied upon, as well as how ~~heartbreaking~~ effective the ones they used were.

Things I Wanted to Love But Didn't Quite

* Sharon Carter. I liked her okay, but I thought she was a bit underutilized. (Of course, I'm saying this as someone who thought 136 minutes wasn't nearly too long for this film. I would've been so very fine with them tacking on another five minutes if it meant a little extra development of Sharon's character.) Though hopefully she'll have a larger and more awesome role in CA3, and in the meantime, that's what fanfic is for. (Am I the only person who came out of the film shipping Sharon/Natasha? Because I definitely think that this is something that should happen.)

* Natasha kicking ass is always awesome...but not quite as awesome as an older woman on the WSC having and using those same skills. The deception made sense plot-wise, but it was still a bit of a letdown.

Things I Didn't Love At All

* Natasha should have figured out that those badges were dangerous long before Pierce triggered them. That was just stupid.

* I was deeply unimpressed by that first glimpse of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Hopefully they'll be better in Age of Ultron than that scene suggests.

Things I Love Forever

* Everything else. :-)

* The way they adapted the Winter Soldier arc and made it something new and interesting, while still keeping the basic emotional tenor of the comics, was really brilliant.

* The Winter Soldier barely had any lines, and still I was this close "" to being a complete wreck whenever he was onscreen, he was so determined and desperately confused and lost.

* Steve! ♥ How perfectly did this film get his character? He's the person who always does--or at the very least tries his utmost to do--the right thing, no matter how hard he might find it personally. And he's also the guy who makes jokes about having a barbershop quartet and who's really happy that we've eradicated polio and who thinks the internet is great and etc. ad infinitum. So much love!

* Natasha was amazing, as per always, but especially in the way she leveraged her own uncertainty and vulnerability. Like, I do think she was basically sincere in everything she revealed to Steve about herself...but I also think she would've never said those things if she didn't believe that doing so was the best way to get Steve to trust her. And the way she deals with her identity issues is such a stunning contrast to Bucky: neither of them knows who they are, but Natasha's basically in control of the situation, while all Bucky has is a slowly dawning realization that something's wrong, hidden under layers of anger and confusion and defensiveness.

* I wasn't expecting Maria Hill to be in the film at all, let alone to have such a large role, and she was so, so great. Loved her competence and humor, loved how she was Fury's first call when things started going to shit, and really loved the ending where she applied to work at Stark Industries. (Femslash pairing #2 this film made me want very badly: Maria/Pepper.)

* I'm starting to feel a little repetitive here--"This character was great! And also this one! And this one!"--but, uh, Sam was fantastic. :-) The way he and Steve connected, and the work he was doing at the VA, and how principled and reliable yet fun he was. Also, those wings were awesome; I loved watching him fly.

* I've always liked Fury as a character even when I've sometimes disliked him as a person, and it was excellent seeing him in a bigger and more nuanced role.

* The HYDRA in SHIELD plot thread was executed very deftly, I thought. Pierce was the most obvious candidate for evil mastermind, but the film made me doubt that conclusion for quite a while: initially because of his easy acceptance when Fury asked him to delay Project Insight, and later in that brief moment when he saw the Winter Soldier at his kitchen table and calmly sent his oblivious maid home. That could've been a quietly heroic moment, if he were a different man.

* There's this thing that MCU films have been doing semi-regularly, where they'll have three categories of main characters: protagonists/heroes, antagonists/villains, and antagonists-but-not-villains. That final category includes Maya Hansen, Loki, and the Winter Soldier. And having characters like that in the film ramps up the intensity immeasurably for me, because it complicates what I want the outcome to be. I still want the antagonist to lose, but I want him or her to lose well. (IM3, needless to say, was a great disappointment for me in this regard.)

During the Cap vs. Winter Soldier fight scenes, I wanted the Winter Soldier to lose because he was trying to do terrible things to people who didn't deserve it, and because if Bucky weren't brainwashed, he'd be horrified himself at the idea of his winning. But I also wanted him to be strong and smart and skilled enough to almost win. Which is very much how it played out onscreen, and it was glorious.

* Plus, you know, all the Steve/Bucky feelings in general. I cried rather a lot while watching this film, which is at least a quarter of what I want from anything Marvel with "Winter Soldier" in the title.

Other Stuff:

* I totally forgot Crossbones's real name, so Rumlow's betrayal was a complete--and weirdly satisfying--shock to me. (Well done, Jain's imperfect memory.) Though, speaking of which, I appreciated how Steve was so carefully non-lethal in taking down those SHIELD agents in the elevator. He knew that they had orders to bring him in and that he wasn't going to let them, but he wasn't about to be mean about it.

* I've seen several reviews in which people have mentioned with varying degrees of surprise and/or disappointment that the MCU jettisoned Natasha's and Bucky's Red Room history. But I don't think it's at all certain that they did? Even towards the end of the film, when in theory everyone's secrets have been revealed, Natasha looks very cagey in some of the conversations about trust that she has with Steve and Fury; I'm pretty sure that she's hiding something big from them, and an intimate history with the Winter Soldier would definitely fit the bill. But I suppose we won't know for sure until CA3...or, dare we hope, an actualfax Black Widow film. *crosses fingers*

* Bizarre new headcanon based on Natasha's arrow necklace: Natasha wears it as a sort of personalized variant of those BFF heart necklaces, because after all these years Clint's still the only person she trusts completely and implicitly. But now that's changing, first with Steve and Fury and Maria, and in the near future with Sam and (unbrainwashed) Bucky, and then with maybe one or two of the other Avengers, and before too long Natasha has to wear an entire charm bracelet. :-)

* Less bizarre headcanon: When Steve told Natasha that she wasn't his first kiss since being defrosted, he was telling the truth. He kissed Peggy on the cheek on his first visit to her nursing home. Sometimes when she has an episode and forgets that she's met him in the present already, he thinks about kissing her on the cheek again; he'd kind of like to do so. But that feels too much like taking advantage, so he never does.

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Dear Yuletide Author:

jain — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 05:12:37 GMT

Thank you so much for participating in this exchange and for offering one or more of my requested fandoms! A couple of important things I wanted to tell you:

* Optional details are optional. I've offered some possible hooks for a story in each of my requests because that's how I like to write for exchanges, but if your creativity is sparked in other ways, or if you just don't like any of my suggestions, then feel free to ignore them and write a different story for those characters.

* I'm chattier about some of my requests than others this year. Please don't think that this indicates a preference on my part for one fandom over another. I promise, I'd be equally thrilled to receive a story in any of these fandoms.

General likes and dislikes
I like happy (or at least hopeful) endings, friendship, family (including chosen family), loyalty, determination, cooking and/or eating, people being smart, people being competent, platonic bedsharing, non-platonic bedsharing, pining, unrequited love that turns out to be requited, hurt/comfort, kissing, masturbation, mutual masturbation, frottage, intercrural sex, intergluteal sex, oral sex, talking during sex (not dirty talk, just ordinary conversation), first-time fic, established relationship fic in which there's some sort of shift in the dynamics of the relationship, character- and relationship-driven gen, mild angst with an eventual happy ending, BDSM (with a male sub for m/f), watersports, worldbuilding, cultural differences, historical details, werewolves, case fic, backstory, missing scenes, future fic, third person POV, and past tense.

I don't like breathplay/asphyxiation, vore/cannibalism, scat, emetophilia/vomit, bloodplay, knifeplay, gunplay, suspension, lifestyle D/s, heavy angst, parent-child incest, character-bashing, unexamined misogyny and racism, dialogue-only fic, no dialogue, epithets (e.g. the blond, the taller man, the younger man), the phrases "to his [or her] credit," "had the grace to," and "took him[self] in hand," PWPs, crackfic, unsafe sex (except in historical or fantasy fandoms), zombies, soulmates, omegaverse, first person POV, second person POV, and AUs.

Archer's Goon -- Diana Wynne Jones
Hathaway, Torquil
Canon has already provided delicious brotherly angst and the seeds of a happy ending, but it glossed over most of the best parts. I'd love a story that really delves into their falling out: the original argument, their reconciliation, where their relationship goes in the future...pretty much anything exploring that theme. Gen preferred.

Elementary
Alfredo Llamosa, Joan Watson
Het, please. I like how smart and emotionally aware they both are, and their canonical developing friendship is absolutely charming. (Episode 1x18 was so good for me.) Case fic would be glorious, if your interests run that way, but I'd also love a first time romance or meeting-the-family fic or etc.

Frontier Wolf -- Rosemary Sutcliff
Alexios Flavius Aquila, Hilarion
I adore both these characters. Alexios is hands down my favorite Sutcliff protagonist, and Hilarion is awesomely funny and endearing. And I purely love how open their canonical relationship is to 'shippy future fic. I don't 'ship Alexios/Cunorix, though I think there's basis for reading one-sided romantic attraction from Alexios, which makes for a very reasonable source of angst in a later Alexios/Hilarion relationship.

If you don't want to go the jealousy route--or if you do, but want to trope it up a little--then werewolves are always completely awesome in this fandom. I'd love to see werewolf!Hilarion in particular, but there are plenty of other options, as well. (And I realize that this pairs an unusual trope with an unusual kink, but Frontier Wolf werewolves + watersports would make my year.)

Iskryne Series -- Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Isolfr, Skjaldwulf, Vethulf
Triad fic, please! I liked how The Tempering of Men developed Skjaldwulf's and Vethulf's side of the triangle, but I think that all three men have a long way to go before they're entirely settled in their relationship, and I'd love to see some of that process. Romance and porn are both great (though I'd prefer to not receive a PWP), as are explorations of the sociopolitical aspects of their relationships with each other and with the wolfheall.

The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K. Le Guin
Arek Harth rem ir Estraven, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
My primary interests in this fandom are, in order: 1) Therem, 2) winter on Gethen, 3) Therem's and Arek's relationship, and 4) Gethenian sociopolitical structures. If you don't want to write 'shipfic focusing on these two characters, then gen fic about Therem is more than welcome, especially if it explores the physical setting and/or Gethenian politics. I'd prefer a story set pre-LHoD.

Nova -- Samuel R. Delany
Katin Crawford, Pontichos "The Mouse" Provechi
Slash, please. This book is such fun, and Katin and the Mouse and their unlikely friendship were my favorite parts of it. I'd love to see what happens to them after the novel's end.

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Ten Reasons Why Pacific Rim Is a Great Movie for Geek Girls

jain — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 20:36:00 GMT

I recently read an Entertainment Weekly article on Why 'Pacific Rim' is a good movie for geek girls (contains major spoilers for the film). The article's conclusion is that Pacific Rim is mostly a terrible movie for women, except for the fact that it contains a bunch of hot guys. I...disagree. Hence this post on "Ten Reasons Why Pacific Rim Is a Great Movie for Geek Girls."

Disclaimer: In the following list, I make a lot of gendered generalizations. Obviously, there are exceptions to every generalization; there are men whose favorite thing is Jane Austen adaptations and women whose favorite thing is action movies that are 95% mindless violence and 5% toilet humor.

There's also room for a ton of overlap in people's tastes. Maybe you love emotional complexity as well as kickass fight scenes, or strong interrelationships as well as stunning special effects. Nevertheless, I think that all of the following items highlight elements of Pacific Rim that make it particularly appealing to female viewers (even if many of the elements might improve the viewing experiences of male viewers, as well).

Additional disclaimer: While this list was initially conceived of as a response to the above-linked EW article, I've read 50+ reviews of Pacific Rim at this point--both professional and fannish--and the list draws upon and responds to common themes in many of these reviews.

Additional additional disclaimer: I've avoided major spoilers in this post, but minor spoilers abound. Caveat lector.

1) Obvious to me, but apparently not so obvious to the people writing a lot of the reviews I've read: plenty of fangirls grew up (or grew into) loving mecha and/or monster movies, just as fanboys did. Power Rangers had and continues to have huge numbers of female fans. Ditto anime series like Gundam and Code Geass. And of course the Alien movies and Jurassic Park and numerous other popular monster flicks have broad appeal, too. I don't have statistics on the proportion of male to female fans in any of these fandoms, but even if they are weighted towards the male end, we're still talking about thousands upon thousands of fangirls who are or should be part of Pacific Rim's built-in target audience.

As to whether this particular mecha vs. monster film would appeal to the pre-existing population of female fans... Speaking personally, I'll admit that I'm less enthusiastic than your average male fan about simply watching giant robots battle alien dinosaurs. (I love a good fight scene, but a good fight scene for me involves more than just cool opponents and big explosions.) Otoh, I'm no doubt a hell of a lot more enthusiastic than your average male fan about watching two people co-piloting a giant robot by merging their consciousnesses. Add to that basic premise the fact that the fight scenes are beautifully filmed, as expected from a director of Guillermo del Toro's caliber, and I for one am completely sold.

2) The film really emphasizes the human element of mecha. Back to those robot vs. dinosaur battles: it would've been easier yet so much more boring to stick a camera right up in each of the actors' faces, add a few science-fictional lighting effects, and let the characters direct their Jaegers mentally or using conventional cockpit controls. The film could've then cut to their faces for particularly emotional or significant lines, and 99% of the action in those scenes could've been of the Jaeger-kaiju battle from the outside.

Instead, del Toro made the brilliant decision to outfit the cockpit like an enormously complex, steampunk-inspired treadmill. The gestures the pilots make are mirrored by their Jaegers. The hits the Jaegers receive physically affect their pilots. The whole process is, in a very immediate and visceral sense, nothing like controlling a conventional armored assault vehicle and everything like embodying the mecha. It's very skillfully filmed, and the end result is that in each Jaeger-kaiju fight scene, you as the viewer care not only about the vulnerability of the pilots in the cockpits, should the kaiju manage to penetrate the Jaeger's exterior; or of the citizens in the distant city they're trying to protect; but about the physical vulnerability of these giant machines.

3) There's a complete absence of the male gaze. No underwear shots of a female character; no panning up a woman's body with the camera while she stands there in tight and/or revealing clothing; no fight scenes in which a female character strikes ridiculous poses in order to show off her boobs and butt and pretty hair. There is one male-female fight scene that's intimate and even a little sexy, but it's not sexualized, and certainly not unevenly sexualized in a way that makes the man the subject and the woman the object.

(There's also a scene that invokes the female gaze, as the audience shares the perspective of a woman watching a male character who takes his shirt off before remembering that his door is wide open. YMMV, but I thought this scene was filmed in a far less fetishistic and objectifying manner than your average male gaze scene; I'm happy to discuss why in the comments, with anyone who's seen the movie already or who doesn't mind spoilers. Either way, though, the female gaze: a refreshingly new perspective in action films.)

4) The rookie character is a woman. (How often do we get to have that?!) And she is awesome. Too often rookies become the rookies because they're preternaturally good at something; to get a little psychoanalytical about it, this appeals to the infantile part of us that is convinced that we the viewer, who identifies with the rookie, is the center of the universe. It's often emotionally effective, but it's sloppy storytelling. Mako, though, isn't a savante; she's someone who's been working on this shit for years, who's got the engineering and the tactical knowledge down cold, and she only wants the chance to apply it as a fighter rather than as a techie.

5) Corollary to #4: yes, the protagonist's still a white guy, but the main character arc is Mako's. As several reviews have noted, she follows a classic hero's journey over the course of the film, and it's glorious to watch.

6) Family relationships play a major role in the movie. And along with the expected father-son and brother-brother relationships, there's also a [spoiler redacted] relationship that is heart-tuggingly realistic and wonderful, and in which Mako doesn't function as a symbol but as a fully-realized person whose interactions with [spoiler redacted] have shaped both their lives.

7) Though I wanted the film to do much better on this front, in addition to Mako, there's a supporting female character who's a Jaeger pilot and a number of female extras in the Jaeger program. And at least the relatively low percentage of women in the film's two main locations (a military installation and a construction site in Alaska) can be partly justified by the fact that women now--and arguably in the near future--continue to be underrepresented in all three of those areas: the military, construction, and Alaska.

8) The central relationship in the film is between a man and a woman who've only known each other for a very short time, and yet, midway through the movie, I realized that it didn't matter whether they stayed platonic ~~life partners~~ teammates or whether they got together romantically: I'd be happy either way. Too many action film narratives adopt the following romantic storyline: Man: *saves the world*, Woman: *is pretty*, Man and Woman: *fall in love*. Notice that this storyline is missing things like, oh, an actual emotional connection between the two characters. Compare this to Pacific Rim, in which Man and Woman meet, share their consciousnesses and memories, and join together to help save the world. A lack of emotional connection is really not a problem.

9) Even beyond the fact that the male and female leads are more evenly matched than in many films, this movie rejects the idea of a lone (white, American, male) action hero. The Jaeger initiative is an explicitly international effort, and the importance and value of teamwork is perhaps the most significant theme in the movie.

10) Oh, yeah, and there are some gorgeous guys in the film, and sometimes they take their shirts off and/or look really good in form-fitting armor. Plus there's a gorgeous woman who doesn't take her shirt off but who also looks really good in form-fitting armor, if you're a geek girl who likes the ladies instead of or in addition to the menfolk.

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Pacific Rim (non-specific spoilers only)

jain — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 03:07:43 GMT

I saw Pacific Rim today: excellent film, will see in the theaters again.

If you don't like mecha and/or alien dinosaurs, you probably won't love this movie. It's a lot (a lot) more homage than it is subversion. It's skillfully done homage, though, that draws not only on the obvious anime, Godzilla, Power Rangers, etc. antecedents but on Independence Day and H. P. Lovecraft and Hokusai. At the same time, it's not derivative (though the Independence Day parallels in particular are strong enough that I wouldn't recommend watching the two films back-to-back). This isn't a Godzilla/Power Rangers mash-up; it's a film that both is a love song to these genres and that also has its own story to tell.

And though I don't think you can love this movie without appreciating one or both of the aforementioned tropes, I think you could still enjoy it a lot if you love any of the following: 1) action movies with heart, 2) stories about families, both born and chosen, 3) stories about damaged people learning how to heal, 4) visually beautiful films, 5) Idris Elba.

P.S. Needs more fic!

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Dear Yuletide writer

jain — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 05:59:50 GMT

Thank you so much for participating in this exchange and for offering one or more of my requested fandoms! A few important things I wanted to tell you:

* Optional details are optional. I've offered some possible hooks for a story in each of my requests because that's how I like to write for exchanges, but if your creativity is sparked in other ways, or if you just don't like any of my suggestions, then feel free to ignore them and write a different story for those characters.

* Yuletide tends to be a high-pressure exchange for a lot of people, and while I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings if you're one of them, I do want to encourage you to not worry too much. Three of my fandoms are tiny even by Yuletide standards, and the fourth fandom has a heavy preponderance of self-insert fic. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's just not what I'm looking for in fanfic.) So there's very little you could write that I wouldn't be delighted by, just for the fact of its existence.

* I'm chattier about some of my requests than others this year. Please don't think that this indicates a preference on my part for one fandom over another. I promise, I'd be equally thrilled to receive a story in any of these fandoms.

As I said, I tend to prefer more info rather than less when writing for exchanges. If you feel the same, then please check out my general fic kinks and squicks post and/or continue reading:

Holes -- Louis Sachar
Stanley Yelnats/Hector Zeroni
I thought that the way Stanley's and Hector's journey was written in the book was incredibly romantic, and I'd love to see their relationship developed further. If you can't write slash for these characters, then Hector's my favorite and I'd really like to see more of his life: perhaps backstory before he was sent to Camp Green Lake (no need to include Stanley in the fic, if you go that route) or future fic about his adjusting to life after the traumatic experiences he's had.

Upon rereading the book recently, I realized that Hector's backstory is more fleshed-out than I'd remembered it being when I wrote this prompt. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for yet more backstory, if that's what you're interested in! And everything else in my prompt absolutely continues to apply, as well.

Iskryne Series -- Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Isolfr/Skjaldwulf/Vethulf
Threesome fic, please! I liked how The Tempering of Men developed Skjaldwulf's and Vethulf's side of the triangle, but I think that all three men have a long way to go before they're entirely settled in their relationship, and I'd love to see some of that process. Romance and porn are both great (though I'd prefer to not receive a PWP), as are explorations of the sociopolitical aspects of their relationships with each other and with the wolfheall.

My love for this series is overwhelming and not quite rational. Vikings! (Well, sort of.) Trolls! Pairbonding with wolves in a way that's not kitschy but actually cool and a little bit frightening! Men forced into what are essentially marriages of convenience with other men! People doing what they must to survive in a cold, harsh land! Roman incursions into occupied land and the clash of disparate cultures! So many of my favorite things; I adore it. If you're not interested in writing romance for this threesome, then just use my requested characters to explore some of the other things I enthuse about in this paragraph, and I'll be sure to love it. Please don't break the three of them up, though, even if your story doesn't focus closely on the romantic/sexual part of their relationship.

Le Corsaire (ballet)
Ali
Ali's my favorite character, but he functions mostly as a foil for the other characters in the ballet. I'd love to see more about his life from his perspective. A few possibilities: how did he originally come to be Conrad's slave? Does he suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, or is there a more complex or devious reason for the assistance he gives Conrad? Does he become friends with Medora and/or Gulnare? What happens to him after the shipwreck? (A happy ending would be fantastic!)

Gen or shipfic are both welcome. I don't ship Ali/Gulnare on its own, but other than that I'm open to pretty much any het, slash, or poly relationship you could come up with, including Ali/Conrad, Ali/Medora, Ali/Birbanto (non-con, presumably), Ali/Conrad/Medora, Ali/Gulnare/Medora, Ali/OMC, and Ali/OFC.

One piece of head canon that you might find relevant: It seems pretty obvious to me that one of Ali's main duties on the pirate ship is to be available for the pirates' sexual use/abuse. I'm open to reading other interpretations of his role, though!

Smooth Criminal (2Cellos Music Video)
"Luka" (Smooth Criminal)/"Stjepan" (Smooth Criminal)/Woman (Smooth Criminal)
There are a few ways that the action of the music video could be read; please explore your favorite in fic! A happy, poly ending in which the men work out their jealousy and anger and the woman stops being disgusted with the two of them would be especially awesome, but you can leave it angsty if that's your preference.

Source: Smooth Criminal music video

The names Luka and Stjepan are in quotation marks because those are the musicians' names rather than the characters, but I'm fine with the characters being called Stjepan and Luka. I couldn't find the actress's name, but pretty much any female Croatian name will work for that character.

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Happy Pi Day!

jain — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:52:45 GMT

A photo of my family's celebration appears behind the cut.

That's one apple, one blueberry, and two pumpkin pies. The dark spots on the pumpkin pie are bits of unblended brown sugar, since I forgot to soften the lumps before adding it to the pumpkin. There's also a pizza box in the background, because my family (read: me) takes Pi Day very seriously and feels that it requires pizza pies for dinner as well as dessert pies.

Usually we have a more proper three large pies and one tiny pie-lette. This year, however, the can of pumpkin I got was big enough for two pies, but I didn't want to only have two varieties of large pie, so I opted to overshoot the mark a little on the grounds that no one can really object to more pie.

Seriously, I think Pi Day may be my favorite holiday: Thanksgiving involves too much family-induced stress; I don't like parties or drinking late at night, so I tend not to enjoy New Year's; and I'm neither patriotic nor religious, which cuts most of the remaining holidays out of the running. But pie is delicious and math is both useful and interesting, so Pi Day is a holiday that I can really get behind.

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Numb3rs: "Show and Tell"

jain — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 04:28:53 GMT

This is not the story that I'm supposed to be posting next. (That fic is still in progress; it started going in a PWP + feelings direction, and I'm working out whether I should just let the story do what it wants or force a semblance of a plot onto it.) But when I opened this Numb3rs fic recently, I discovered that it was this close to being done; all it needed was a bit of editing and a title. So I edited and titled, and here it is.

Title: Show and Tell
Author: Jain
Characters: Don Eppes, Charlie Eppes, Alan Eppes
Rating: PG
Word count: 1200
Summary: It can be difficult having Charlie as a little brother.
Warning: Includes a teenager using the word "retarded" as an insult.
Permanent link: "Show and Tell" on AO3

It was a stupid risk to take, Don knew. But he needed it, and his mom might notice if he took a shower in the middle of the afternoon and ask what he'd been up to and then Don would die of embarrassment, and it would only take a few minutes.

He let his mind drift as he jerked himself, a flickering slideshow of images: stuff he'd seen, like the way Cathy Jorgensen's shirts strained across her breasts like she was a comic book heroine, and the careful glimpses he'd gotten of Alex Lee's butt when they were changing for gym at adjacent lockers, and other stuff that he'd only imagined.

"Don?" Charlie said, and Don's eyes snapped open to see his little brother standing in the middle of the room, watching him jerk off with a puzzled frown on his face.

"Shit!" he said, fumbling with the blankets. Charlie's eyes widened even further at the curse word, and Don suddenly hated him for being so young and stupid and Charlie. "What are you doing, just walking into my room and staring at me like that?" he demanded angrily. "Are you retarded?" Charlie flinched, his face crumpling, and Don abruptly shifted gears. "Just get out, right now, and don't ever come back in here."

"But Don--"

"Now!" Don said, pretending he was about to climb out of his bed and punch him, even as he cringed inwardly at the idea of losing the cover provided by his blankets.

Charlie whirled around and ran out the door, slamming it behind him.

After a long moment, Don flopped back on his bed with a sigh. He was going to have to make sure that this never ever happened again, but in the meantime... He was still most of the way hard, despite the shock of terror and nausea from being caught mid-jerk off. He slid a hand under the blankets and into the gap of his blue jeans, and if anyone else walked in on him in the next two minutes, he seriously was going to run away from home and never come back.

"Dad," Don said a couple hours later, feeling his heart thudding in his chest.

"Yeah?" Dad asked. He finished testing the apple cake with a knife and slid it back into the oven, then turned to face him.

"I, uh, I need a lock on my door."

Don had a carefully constructed list of arguments, none of which had anything to do with Charlie walking in on him when he'd had a hand on his dick, but his father didn't even ask for a single reason. Instead, he smiled a little at Don and said, "So I've heard."

Don's eyes widened as the implications of that sentence sank in, his previous nervousness washed away in a haze of mortification and fury. "He told you? I'm gonna kill him."

"Hey! Donny," Dad said, grabbing him by the arm just as Don was about to storm out of the room to teach his obnoxious little brother a lesson. He pulled out a kitchen chair and swung Don into it, and Don glowered but went without further fuss. "Charlie didn't do anything wrong, okay? He was confused and a little bit upset that you'd yelled at him for no reason--well, no reason that he could understand--and so he came to me. He didn't mean to invade your privacy; not when he walked in on you, and not when he told me what he saw. I don't want you punishing your brother for acting like a normal eight year old boy, you understand me?"

"Yeah," Don said sullenly, not bothering to disagree with Dad out loud. Still, if Charlie weren't so damned weird, he'd know better than to talk to anyone about what he'd seen.

Dad was still staring at him, as if he wasn't sure that Don really meant it, so Don forced his fists to unclench and laid his hands flat on the table. He couldn't do anything about his stupid blush or about the way his mouth kept twitching into a frown despite his best efforts, but Dad looked satisfied anyway.

"Okay, then," he said. "Tomorrow we can go to the hardware store and get you a sliding lock for your door."

"For real?" Don asked, startled.

His father gave him a complicated expression: sort of amused and proud and rueful, all at once. "You're obviously old enough to need one. I'm just sorry your mother and I didn't think of this before. We could have saved your brother a lot of trauma."

"Charlie isn't really..." Don said, feeling a cold shiver in his belly. They'd done a section on child abuse in his health class, and it wasn't like Don had done anything to Charlie on purpose, but he'd certainly given him an eyeful, and Charlie was only eight, and--

"No, no, of course not," Dad said quickly, cutting Don's spiraling guilt trip off in mid-flow. "That was a joke, Donny. Charlie's fine."

"Oh. Right," Don said, trying to play it cool.

Dad laughed a little and tousled Don's hair affectionately. "You're a good older brother, Donny."

"Uh, thanks," Don said. If Dad wanted to forget that Don had wanted to murder Charlie only five minutes earlier, Don certainly wasn't going to remind him. Just then, the oven timer beeped, and Don beat a hasty retreat while Dad was lunging for the oven mitts.

Don almost didn't hear the knock over the sound of the radio, but the quiet tap came again and he finally registered what he'd heard. "Come in," he called.

The door opened just wide enough for Charlie to peek around it. Don rolled his eyes at him; Charlie was so...so different. "What's up, squirt?"

Charlie didn't even protest the nickname, though his irritation showed in the flick of his eyes and the small purse of his mouth. "I'm sorry about earlier, I'll be more careful next time," he said, all in a rush. "And Dad says dinner's ready and you should wash your hands and come down to eat."

Don smiled despite himself. Charlie might be weird and annoying and kind of a brat, but he could still be an okay kid at times. "Don't worry about it," he said easily. "Water under the bridge."

"Yeah?" Charlie asked, staring at Don with a hopeful expression. When Don didn't take it back, he rushed him and gave him a hug. Don rolled his eyes again--not that Charlie could see him with his face tucked into the front of Don's shirt--and returned the hug for a few seconds.

Then he patted Charlie's back and said, "Okay, buddy. Dinnertime now."

Charlie raced for the stairs with as much enthusiasm as he'd used in tackling Don for the hug. Heartfelt apologies aside, Don knew that Charlie's promise to be careful probably wouldn't last longer than the next distracting math problem...which was to say, an hour past dinner if Don was lucky. His eyes flicked over to the light-grained wood of his door where he and Dad would install the lock the next day. Yeah, a little more privacy was definitely in order.

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Ted Chiang

jain — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 03:49:47 GMT

In 2003, Ted Chiang turned down a Hugo nomination for his short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary," on the grounds that he'd been rushed in writing the story and he felt it didn't deserve the recognition. I've been working my way through Chiang's (small, though awesome) body of work, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear of that decision because I thought there was a glaring omission in "Liking What You See" that really weakened the story for me.

While I was reading it, I kept expecting a character to point out that beauty as a social concept developed because it served an evolutionary purpose in helping humans select healthy mates, but that medical advances, including genetic testing, as well as the social changes that increased the number of people who voluntarily forego parenthood, had both devalued beauty's evolutionary function. Proponents of calliagnosia should have been arguing that beauty in their society was no more necessary than a full complement of wisdom teeth; instead, the story touched on the evolutionary history of beauty but never took that idea to its obvious conclusion.

I enjoyed the story despite this flaw, but it did niggle at me. Thoughts, disagreements, etc.?

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Lifestyle change

jain — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:54:49 GMT

Until recently, my desk/computer chair was a rocking recliner, which 1) took up a lot of space in my somewhat cramped room and 2) made it far too easy for me to settle in and not move for hours on end. Not healthy at all. So I moved the recliner downstairs and bought this semi-recumbent stationary bike. It arrived yesterday and my brother put it together for me, and it's lovely: sleek and comfortable and very, very quiet. I rode it for 40 minutes yesterday while reading some fanfiction and for 50 minutes this morning while watching The Mentalist, with the eventual goal of riding it every time I'm at the computer and not typing or actively using the mouse.

For periods of active computer use, I've revived the desk chair I used in college: a kneeling chair that's comfortable enough for extended sitting but not so cozy that I never want to leave it. It's only been a week since I switched desk chairs, but so far I've been really pleased with how much more I've been moving around. (And with how much more water I've been drinking! It's a lot easier to stay hydrated when I'm not curled into a recliner with a comforter over me and completely disinclined to go to the kitchen for a glass of water.) The dog is less happy about all this, since he can no longer sit on my lap while I'm at the computer; he's taken to coming into my room and lying on the floor with his head on his paws, looking mournful. Though at least the bike is quiet enough that it doesn't scare him, so really he should be grateful. :-)

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2011 Fannish Retrospective (only a month or so late)

jain — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:17:28 GMT

Your main fandom of the year?
Just like 2010, I've spent the past year flitting about like a fannish butterfly on speed. Major fandoms have included: Sherlock, The Social Network, Dresden Files, Inception, X-Men: First Class, and Suits.

Your favorite film watched this year?
The Princess and the Frog

Your favorite book read this year?
The Dispossessed

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
2Cellos

Your favorite TV show of the year?
Suits

Your favorite journaling community of the year?
kink_finders

Your biggest squee moment of the year?
Pretty much every moment of screentime Gina Torres has in Suits.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
99% of explicit Arthur/Eames fic has Arthur bottoming. Please note that I don't begrudge people any of those thousands of stories--and in fact I've read many of them with great pleasure--but I do wish that there could be, in addition, a few hundred stories in which Arthur tops the hell out of Eames, rather than the twenty-five or so that I've managed to find.

Your TV boyfriend of the year?
No one, really. Though if this question were expanded to include movies, then it would be Arthur. (Inception was released in 2010, but I didn't see it until 2011.)

Your TV girlfriend of the year?
Jessica Pearson, Donna

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?
I'm disinclined to try a new fandom at the moment. I have too many ideas percolating for Inception and XMFC and Social Network and Suits fic, and I don't want to move on until I've gotten some of them down.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?
I am really looking forward to Remix Redux, even more than I usually do. Tenth year celebration!

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Dear Purim Gifts writer:

jain — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:45:57 GMT

Thanks for offering to write in one or more of my requested fandoms! If you want a better idea of what I like, you can check out my general fic kinks and squicks post. Particular to Purim Gifts, I've listed my favorite pairings in the fandom details below, but all three of these fandoms are ones in which I'm very happy to receive gen fic about any of my favorite characters. And do have fun with whatever you decide to write; I'm sure I'll love it!

Inception RPF
So, when I say I want Inception RPF, what I really mean is I want Joseph Gordon-Levitt fic. I do prefer his being written as gay (Tom Hardy/JGL is particularly nice), but you should also feel free to write gen in which his sexuality isn't mentioned if that's your preference. And if you offered this fandom in the hopes of writing one of the Inception actresses, then Ellen Page gen or femslash is a more than acceptable alternative.

Suits
I love Jessica and Donna best, though Rachel and Scotty are also awesome, and I wouldn't say no to a story or two about the mysterious Vanessa. My favorite pairings, etc., are Jessica/Mike, Jessica/Mike/Harvey, Donna/Rachel, Jessica/Donna/Harvey, and Jessica/Donna. Just, please, no Trevor, Jenny, or Louis, and no Mike/Harvey (except as part of a Jessica/Mike/Harvey threesome, if you're going that route).

X-Men: First Class
My favorite eligible characters are Erik, Angel, and Moira. If you're interested in writing shipfic, I'd love any of: Erik/Charles/Angel, Erik/Moira, Angel/Raven, Alex/Darwin/Angel. This fandom is one where I really don't mind if you break my heart--angst; heavy depictions of racism, homophobia, sexism, and/or anti-Semitism; and ambiguous or downright unhappy endings are all fine by me. Which isn't to say that you have to write angsty or serious fic; happy or romantic fluff is equally welcome! Just, the option is there if you want it.

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Rare Women exchange

jain — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:15:52 GMT

Sign-ups are open for the Rare Women Fic Exchange (rarewomen), a challenge for underrepresented female characters; here's the list of nominated fandoms and characters from which participants can choose. See also the rules and timeline if you're interested in the exchange. Sign-ups close on February 8th.

I'm still internally debating which large fandom I want to request--The Social Network? X-Men: First Class? Hikaru no Go?--but I'm excited about signing up as soon as I've gotten that worked out. (My small fandoms I'm already set on: Suits and Nobuta wo Produce.)

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WIP poll

jain — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:45:19 GMT

I was doing a bit of AO3 housecleaning, addressing gift fic to people who hadn't had AO3 accounts when I'd originally posted the stories, and I became curious as to the ratio of gift fic to non-gift fic that I've written. The results were fairly dramatic: 102 : 66. (I counted fic written for remix exchanges as gift fic and didn't count fic written for kink meme prompts.) This means that 65% of my fic was written for other people! Of course, when one considers how prone to procrastination I am, the reasons for this become abundantly clear; I pretty much require a sense of social obligation to force me to get shit done.

If I were a better person, I'd consider this a sign that I ought to work to become more self-motivated. As it is, however, I'll instead rely upon you to give me a much needed nudge. I have a baker's dozen WIPs, any of which I ought to be able to finish within a week or two if I really buckled down, and all of which I've been dragging my feet on finishing (some of them for years). Help me decide what to write?

View poll: #9124

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The Social Network: "Five Times Mark Shared a Bed in College"

jain — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:52:48 GMT

Title: Five Times Mark Shared a Bed in College
Author: Jain
Pairing: Mark/Erica, Mark/Chris, Mark/Eduardo
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 3226
Author's notes: Written for flyingthesky for 3_ships.
Permanent link: "Five Times Mark Shared a Bed in College" on AO3

"I don't think this is doing anything for me," Mark said.

Dustin rolled his eyes. "You've taken, like, three hits. Keep going." He made a sort of shooing gesture at the pipe in Mark's hands, and Mark sighed and brought it to his lips for another hit.

It burned acridly in his throat and lungs as he inhaled. He didn't try to hold it; there'd been that study that showed holding onto marijuana smoke didn't increase the rate of THC absorption, which Chris had printed out and taped to the wall above Dustin's bed — "in the interests of you still have lungs when you're fifty, asshole" — and that Dustin had totally ignored.

He passed the pipe to Dustin, suppressing a cough. "Seriously, can't I just get a beer and go back to my computer? This isn't working."

Dustin released his breath of smoke. "No, you can't. I'm peer pressuring you into finding a form of relaxation that doesn't involve code. It's a good life experience."

"You should pass that recommendation on to the Harvard Social Committee," Mark said dryly. "I'm sure they'd appreciate your insights." Still, he took the pipe when Dustin pressed it into his hands once more.

"You'll be kicking yourself when we've finished all your weed and I'm still not high," he added, resting his head on Dustin's shoulder for a moment. "'s a waste of good weed. Or, well, I assume this is good weed because you bought it and you're kind of a pothead. I don't really know for sure." Dustin was wearing a fleece hoodie and he smelled like fabric softener; it was comfortable enough that Mark didn't bother raising his head when he passed the pipe back to Dustin.

"I'm pretty sure I'm okay with wasting a little pot on you," Dustin said, smiling, as he stroked his free hand through Mark's hair. "You want another hit, or are you good?" he asked.

He ducked his head a little to look Mark in the face. Mark opened his mouth to answer, but before he could say anything, Dustin said, "Yeah, you're good," and slumped back against the wall. Mark closed his eyes and let himself drift, soothed by Dustin's warmth and the gentle hand still playing with his curls.

Mark woke up slowly, puzzled by the warm, heavy pressure against his stomach until he opened his eyes and realized that he was still in Dustin's bed and Dustin was curled up behind him with an arm around his waist. He fumbled in his pocket for his cellphone to check the time.

"Holy shit!"

Dustin jumped, then his arm disappeared and he rolled onto his other side, away from Mark. "Whzzt?" he asked, not sounding particularly concerned.

"It's 10:45! I'm supposed to be in lab in ten minutes." He got out of Dustin's bed and yanked off his sweatshirt, reapplying deodorant in lieu of a shower and grabbing another shirt from the pile of clean laundry in his basket.

Dustin mumbled something that Mark, with some thought, finally deciphered as "Granola bars in my top drawer."

Mark crammed his feet into his sneakers, grabbed his backpack and a couple of Dustin's granola bars, and made a run for it.

A phone rang, its 'brrrinngg' surprisingly loud in Mark's ear, and then someone reached over him to grab it and he remembered: not an incoming call, but Erica's alarm.

"We could get coffee," he said quickly, before she could kiss him and say goodbye. "There's an independent coffee shop on the way to your bus stop. I haven't gone there yet, but Chris says it's good, especially their muffins."

She blinked at him, apparently needing a moment to process his invitation. Not a morning person, obviously, but that was fine. Neither was Mark; the only reason he'd managed to get all that out coherently was that he'd rehearsed it in his head last night after Erica had fallen asleep.

She smiled at him. "Sure, that sounds great. Let me just use your bathroom first, okay?"

Mark nodded and watched her wiggle into her jeans under the covers and then leave.

The moment the door closed behind her, something hit Mark in the head.

"What the hell?" he snapped. He grabbed the projectile — a balled-up pair of socks — off the bed and chucked it back at Dustin, who was glaring at Mark at least as hard as Mark was glaring at him.

"Mark," Dustin hissed. "I realize that you consider socialization a useless skill practiced by boring people, but even you have got to know better than to have Erica sleep over without at least warning your roommate, i.e. me, beforehand."

"It's not like we did anything," Mark said defensively.

"Good to know, but still not the point. You could have, and then I'd be stuck in here with the two of you and no way to escape with my dignity."

"Whatever," Mark said. "You never objected to any of the times when Eduardo slept over. I don't see why this is any different."

"Uh, maybe because you don't have sex with Eduardo?" Dustin said sarcastically.

Mark made a face but didn't bother correcting him. If Dustin was going to be that stupid, it wasn't Mark's job to set him straight.

Only apparently Dustin could read that in his expression, because he squeaked, "Oh my God, you do have sex with Eduardo?"

"Sometimes," Mark said. "Not now, obviously, since I have a girlfriend."

"I can't believe you've had sex with Eduardo. I can't believe I didn't know you've had sex with Eduardo. What other secret hookups have you been keeping from me?"

"Do you really want to know?" The water went off in the bathroom, and Mark started pulling on his jeans.

Dustin's eyes went wide. "Oh my God, that was a joke. Who? No, wait. Is it going to break my brain?"

"Maybe," Mark said. He pulled on his sneakers.

"Fuck, I can't stop thinking about it." Dustin stared at him as though he were trying to divine the answer telepathically. Then he huffed a sigh and shook his head. "No, don't tell me. I mean, I'll probably cave and ask you in, like, two days, but for now I'm going to preserve my innocence."

There was a soft rap on the door and Dustin promptly lay down and pulled the covers over his head. Mark rolled his eyes and opened the door to find Erica, looking far prettier than he would have expected of someone wearing no makeup and yesterday's clothes. "You ready?" she asked with a smile.

Mark grabbed his wallet and keys off his dresser and ignored the silent, duvet-covered lump behind him that was Dustin. "Sure," he said. "Let's go."

"We should go to my dorm," Eduardo said, plucking at Mark's duvet with restless fingers but not actually making a move to get out of bed.

"Dustin's not here," Mark pointed out reasonably. He slid his hand a little farther down Eduardo's back, his fingers dipping under the waistband of Eduardo's pants.

Eduardo kissed him — a quick, wet, slightly beery press of lips — but said, "He could come back any second."

Mark shrugged. "He said he wanted to shut the party down. I don't see why we shouldn't take him at his word. Besides, it's, like, fifteen degrees outside. If you go back to your dorm, you're going alone. And I really wanted to blow you tonight."

Eduardo's face softened a little, just as it always did, as if Mark had said something especially nice to him rather than made a simple statement of fact. "Okay," he said and kissed Mark again.

Mark kissed back for a minute and then ducked beneath the covers to get at Eduardo's dick. Eduardo let out a short laugh, almost a giggle, before reaching down to help Mark unbutton his pants — undoing the interior button quickly, as though he really thought Mark was going to forget it again and ruin a second pair of Eduardo's fancy dress pants — and get them and his boxer-briefs shoved down and off his long legs.

Mark rubbed his cheek against Eduardo's dick, feeling the impossible softness of the skin and incidentally getting a smear of wetness on his cheekbone.

Eduardo made a choked sound, hips thrusting minutely, and Mark allowed himself a quick grin before rising up a little to hold onto the base and suck Eduardo's dick into his mouth. Eduardo was always ridiculously polite even while getting a blowjob; any time he moved, he always checked himself immediately, and the resultant action was more of a wiggle than anything that might actually choke Mark.

It meant that Mark could close his eyes and turn off his brain and just enjoy the taste and feel of Eduardo in his mouth. After a moment, Eduardo's hands reached down to cup Mark's face, Eduardo's thumb brushing against his open lips and then tracing the line of Mark's jaw.

Mark hummed in appreciation, which made Eduardo let out a somewhat muffled moan. The miniature feedback loop made Mark think of sixty-nining, which would be awesome except that Dustin really would kill him if he walked in on something like that. At least Eduardo's receiving a blowjob was mostly hidden by the covers, even if it was totally obvious what was happening. Anything more elaborate than this would have to wait until they were in Eduardo's single.

Mark's dick was aching by that point, but he managed to keep his hands away from it. Just five or ten more minutes — twenty tops — and Eduardo would moan sexily and maybe gasp Mark's name and come in his mouth, and then Mark could get him to reciprocate with a blowjob, or even just a handjob that would nonetheless be ten times better than anything Mark could do for himself.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Chris asked for the fourth time. If Mark were a more violent person, he'd probably punch him.

"I asked for it," he said. "I want it. Now can we stop fucking talking about it and just do it?"

Chris took a look at his face and held his hands up in surrender. "Hey, far be it from me to dissuade anyone from the joys of anal sex. All I'm saying is that there's no checklist of gay sex acts, and you shouldn't feel that you have to do this one unless it's really what you want. Also, not everyone likes getting fucked, as a point of fact, and I don't want you being a pissy little bitch and taking it out on me for the next month if this doesn't meet your expectations."

"Okay, disclaimer fucking noted," Mark said. "Now can you lube me up and fuck me?"

Chris shook his head, but he was smiling a little. "Honestly, I have no idea why I like you sometimes."

Mark didn't bother answering. He honestly didn't understand why most people liked each other; he didn't think he was a special case. It was just luck that had made him friends with Chris, Dustin, and Eduardo, all of whom were, objectively speaking, very likable people.

"Have you fingered yourself before?" Chris asked, squeezing some lube onto his right hand.

Mark swallowed, his throat feeling dry for some inexplicable reason. He nodded. "Two fingers. I don't do it often; the angle's annoying, especially if I want to jerk off at the same time."

Chris nodded in return. His slick fingers pressed between Mark's spread legs, circling Mark's asshole but not pushing inside yet. His cheeks were flushed pink, and he kept licking his lips unconsciously; it was a good look for him. "Anyone else finger you?" he asked.

Mark swallowed again. "Eduardo."

It was what had finally decided him upon asking Chris for this. If Eduardo was even considering fucking him, or vice versa, then Mark wanted to be prepared, especially since he didn't think Eduardo had ever gone beyond blowjobs with another guy. (He couldn't be sure without asking, and Eduardo sometimes got squirrelly about questions like that. Better to just avoid the whole issue.) And Chris was good in bed — as Mark knew from previous experience — and also a nice enough person that he wouldn't spread it around if Mark sucked at this.

"Okay," Chris said, his voice a little hoarse. Mark wondered if Chris and Eduardo had ever hooked up; the two of them would look good together.

And then Chris slid a finger, or maybe two — Mark wasn't exactly able to analyze the situation at the moment — into his ass, and Mark was yanked firmly back into the present, idle fantasies of Chris and Eduardo drifting to the periphery of his consciousness.

"Oh, fuck," he said.

"Soon," Chris said smugly, and Mark barely remembered to scowl at him.

Chris's fingers felt really good — much better than Mark's ever had. Maybe not as good as Eduardo's, but Eduardo had been blowing him at the time, so that wasn't a fair comparison.

As if on cue, Chris ducked his head down to lick the head of Mark's dick. He pulled away almost immediately, and Mark made a noise of protest.

"Just hang on," Chris said, smiling at him. "I'll suck you off later if you want. Right not I'm doing something."

He was doing a lot, actually, the slide of his fingers in Mark's ass smooth and easy and kind of amazing, especially when they brushed against Mark's prostate.

Christ was seriously into it, too, that was obvious. Mark didn't quite get it; he liked the parts of sex that felt good, like fucking and blowjobs — giving and receiving — and getting handjobs. Going down on a girl, too, if she didn't take too long to get off and make his mouth sore. But he didn't get how just touching someone could get Chris and Eduardo and Erica and pretty much the entire sample population of people who'd slept with him so hot.

It totally worked out in his favor, though, so he wasn't about to complain. Mark was pretty much a sweaty, panting wreck when Chris finally pulled away and said, "Okay, how do you want it?"

He turned over immediately, onto his hands and knees, then frowned at Chris's fresh sheets and said, "Should we put a towel down or something? 'Cause I'm not sleeping in the wet spot, and Dustin'll be pissed if we go sleep in my bed."

Chris laughed and said, "Sure, we can do that." He got one of his oversized bath sheets and spread it out on the bed for Mark. Then he got on the bed behind him and placed one hand on his hip, stroking it carefully. "Let me know if you need to stop, okay?"

"Okay," Mark said, even though he really wanted to say, "I won't. I know I won't," because that might make Chris stop so they could talk some more and would be totally counterproductive.

There was the sound of a condom wrapper being ripped open, and then a moment later he felt the blunt pressure of Chris's dick against his asshole, pushing its way into his body.

He sucked in a sharp breath, not so much with pain — though there was some pain — as with the overwhelming immediacy of it. He could feel the rest of his body distantly, but somehow none of it, not even his hard-on, was as important as his ass clenching tight and hot around Chris's dick.

"You good?" Chris asked, his body stilling even as his voice shook slightly.

"Yes. Move," Mark said — growled, really; he'd never heard himself sound like that.

Chris chuckled breathlessly and, oh, that was different: Mark could feel his laughter from the inside out. And then Chris really started to move, and everything got even more awesome.

Mark didn't come from the fucking, though Chris did, obviously, shuddering quietly through his orgasm while clutching Mark hard enough to bruise. "Boarding school habits die hard," Mark thought but didn't say. Dustin would appreciate Chris's silence, anyway.

And then Chris made good on his promise to blow Mark, slipping just one finger into his ass, which was a bit sore but not sore enough for Mark to ask him to take the finger out.

Later, when they were both clean and tucked in, the (mostly dry) bath sheet tossed in the hamper, Chris asked, "So, what did you think?"

"We should definitely do that again," Mark said. "And the other way around, too."

"Awesome," Chris said and kissed him on the cheek.

Mark looked at him in some surprise; they'd made out after sharing an entire bottle of tequila once, but mostly they didn't kiss. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure why not. Mark kissed guys — but maybe Chris didn't know that?

Mark leaned in, prepared to pull away if Chris objected, and kissed him on the lips, as softly and carefully as Eduardo had kissed him that first time. Chris kissed back.

"Holy fuck," Chris breathed from between Mark and Eduardo. "Mark, I should never have doubted you when you kept angling for a threesome. I'm actually warm."

"We're not having a threesome," Mark said, his voice sour even though he wasn't that annoyed. Or, if he was, it wasn't over the lack of a threesome. Most people didn't have threesomes, so it wasn't really something Mark could reasonably expect.

On the other hand, very few of the people eschewing threesomes were doing so because one of the prospective participants had had a drunken hookup in a bar restroom and somehow ended up with a girlfriend out of the deal. Mark was maybe a little annoyed about that, especially since his own drunken bar hookup had lasted twenty minutes with no repeat performances. Alice hadn't even given him her number.

"This is better than a threesome," Chris said. "I swear, this is the first time I've felt my toes since getting off the plane."

Eduardo snorted, and Mark couldn't help but be amused despite himself.

"This is why you shouldn't go home for winter break," Eduardo said earnestly. "Once you've acclimated to the Boston cold, you can't fuck with that."

"You went home for winter break," Mark pointed out.

"Exactly," Eduardo said. "And look at me now."

Mark guessed it was a fair point. It had been Chris's idea to shove Mark's and Dustin's beds together for the three of them to share, but Eduardo hadn't needed much convincing.

"Do you think Dustin would mind if we just left the beds like this 'til March?" Chris asked, already sounding half-asleep.

"Ask him when he gets back tomorrow," Mark said absently. His laptop was sitting open on the desk; from his position, he could almost read the file he'd been working on earlier.

Eduardo followed his line of sight, grinned, and got up to fetch Mark's laptop. "Here," he said softly, handing it over.

Mark nodded his thanks and propped it on his knees. They'd turned off the overhead earlier, leaving just Mark's desklamp on, but that and the light of the laptop screen was plenty to see by.

Eduardo got back into bed and pulled the covers up past his chin. "Goodnight," he whispered.

Mark gave him a brief nod. "Night," he said and began to type, feeling inexplicably happier than he had in a really long time.

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Big Bangs

jain — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:46:29 GMT

You know what would be awesome? If big bang challenges allowed writers to sign up to create complementary works: remixes or sequels or prequels or missing scenes or etc. of the big bang stories. I'm thinking 2500 words minimum of complementary work per 10,000 words minimum of big bang would be reasonable, so, e.g., for a big bang challenge with a 20,000 word minimum, the complementary work would have a 5000 word minimum. If the moderators chose, they might allow the original authors to specify in their sign-ups what type(s) of complementary work they preferred, just as some big bangs currently allow authors to state a preference for art or fanmixes.

As a writer, I'd love to be able to participate in big bang challenges (even as I'm resigned to the fact that I'll likely never write a story exceeding 8500 words), and as a part of the audience, I'd really enjoy reading the complementary stories that big bangs could produce, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. And there are plenty of authors who would like having their work engaged with in this way, right? Win-win-win, all around.

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My computer

jain — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:51:29 GMT

So, my computer failure turned out not to be the motherboard--which is what the computer geeks in my life had been speculating based on my description of the failure--but instead my hard drive. This had the potential to be very, very bad, since I am lazy about backing up my files, but! My brother was able to recover all of my data!!! It took some doing, including sticking my dying hard drive in the freezer for a bit and retrieving the data with a computer running Linux when it became evident that the computer running Windows just could. not. do it., but in the end he prevailed.

This also means that I didn't have to replace my entire computer, but just the hard drive, which is much easier on my pocketbook (even if I am the tiniest bit sad that I can't justify buying a laptop anymore). The replacement of my hard drive went something like this:

Me: So, how much will a new hard drive cost me? And how quickly can it get here, like, two days? I don't want to wait too much longer to have a functioning computer.
Brother: (turns to rummage in one of his drawers for a bit) Well, I can give you this two terabyte one for $100.

So I now have a gorgeous, huge new hard drive, and my computer is running smoothly again, and I'm trying out Linux and really enjoying it, and basically my brother's the best thing ever. \o/

And now I'm going to go back up my data. :-)

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Suits: "In the Job Description"

jain — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:54:27 GMT

Title: In the Job Description
Author: Jain
Characters: Donna, Harvey
Rating: G
Word count: 786
Summary: Two people, one hotel bed.
Author's notes: Written for lionessvalenti for fandom_stocking.
Permanent link: "In the Job Description" on AO3

"When I bring my assistant with me on a business trip, I generally expect her to make my life easier," Harvey grumbled. "Not steal my bed."

Donna smiled sweetly. "You have a sofa. Alternatively, you have a floor, a bathtub, a nice hotel forty miles away, a couple of cheap motels in this city, or the right hand side of my very large bed. There; I fixed your problem. You're welcome."

He gave her an unimpressed look. "All of your options suck."

"I'd be sorry, except for the part where there are actually a few things not in my job description, and 'knowing the President of the United States's secret travel plans so that I can avoid unexpectedly overbooked hotels' is one of them."

"How about 'taking the sofa so that Harvey can have his bed back'?" Harvey asked sourly.

Donna shook her head with mock regret. "Nope, that's not in my job description, either."

"Of course not." Harvey sighed. "Throw me a pillow?"

"Just one?" Donna asked. "I've got six. This really is a very nice bed, Harvey."

"Fine, I'll take two pillows."

Donna pitched them at him one at a time with unerring aim. "I've got two duvets, as well, but if you want one of them, you'll have to come get it yourself."

Harvey levered himself up off the sofa, suppressing a sigh; it had been a long day of travel, and while the sofa wasn't the most uncomfortable he'd tried, he also wasn't looking forward to sleeping on it. He reached for the top duvet, but Donna put a hand on his wrist, effectively holding him in place. Harvey raised an eyebrow at her.

"Or you could actually accept the invitation that I tucked into my earlier sentence," she said. "I'm not worried about what would happen. I know that neither of us wants more from our relationship."

"How do you know I don't want that?" Harvey asked, genuinely curious. Donna was a beautiful and intelligent woman; he'd never hit on her because he tried not to sexually harass the people who worked for him, but that didn't mean he wouldn't have made a play for her in other circumstances.

"I know you don't want it at least as much as you do want it," Donna corrected herself. "Which, for you, means it's not going to happen. So come on and get in bed, and let's both get a decent night's rest before we have to begin tomorrow's fourteen-hour workday."

It was a compelling argument, and Harvey only considered Donna's offer for a handful of seconds before he said, "Fine. But if you put your cold feet on my shins, I won't be responsible for the consequences." He went to retrieve the pillows from the sofa.

"Harvey," Donna said, smiling. "I've been in this gorgeous, fluffy bed for the past half hour. I'm not the one whose feet are cold."

There was no appropriate response to that, so Harvey remained silent and busied himself with stripping down to boxers and undershirt and socks (because if he brushed his cold feet against her after all that, the mockery would be both fierce and completely justified) and climbing into bed. It actually was as huge as Donna had indicated; there was room for at least one and a half people in the space between them. Donna smiled at him serenely across the expanse of downy white comforter just before she reached a hand over to click off the bedside table lamp.

It was strangely comforting to share a bed with someone even when eighteen inches apart; Harvey could hear the slow inhalation and exhalation of Donna's breaths, feel the warmth radiating from her side of the bed and the occasional movements as she shifted position, and it soothed some animal part of him that remained convinced that it was better not to be alone in the dark.

He was on the verge of sleep when Donna said, "Actually, Harvey? I lied about not wanting more out of our relationship."

Harvey froze, wondering if it were possible to fake sleep so perfectly that Donna couldn't see what he was doing and punish him for it later.

"I want you to get over your ridiculous disdain for Manolo Blahniks and compliment me on them when I get a new pair, just as you do for my other shoes, and I want you to talk to Norma occasionally so that I don't have to smooth things over with her every couple of weeks, and I want you to... You know what? I should just send you a list."

Harvey grinned into the darkness. "Goodnight, Donna."

She yawned audibly and turned over with a muffled thump. "Goodnight, Harvey."

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Sherlock 2x01

jain — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:32:37 GMT

I was hoping this season of Sherlock would rekindle my interest in the fandom, but so far the only fic I want to see is the AU in which Irene survives not because Sherlock saves her as in that fairly appalling final scene, but because after she begs for her life and he leaves (a nice bit of playacting on her part that Sherlock never sees through), she renegotiates a new deal with Mycroft.

Her original list of demands was a gamble that rested on the success of her criminal scheme. Her backup list relies instead on her trading Mycroft the information she gleaned concerning Moriarty and his operations, after which she begins a new chapter in her life as a spy for Britain. Mycroft provides her with a certain amount of protection and a generous salary, and in exchange she is instrumental in bringing down Moriarty's criminal empire. Moriarty follows Sherlock to Reichenbach Falls not merely to punish him for thwarting certain of Moriarty's schemes, but because in the wake of Mycroft's and Irene's success, his position in England is far less secure.

After Moriarty's death, Sherlock discovers that Irene is alive (he saw through the witness protection program story, but concluded erroneously that Mycroft was hiding her death from him) and has been working for Mycroft these past several months. He also discovers that she's recently married Mycroft's assistant.

And that scene that caused Sherlock to conclude she was in love with him? Her pupils were dilated because the lighting was freaking dim, and her pulse was elevated because a successful con job is a rush.

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Year's End and New Year

jain — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:30:06 GMT

So, 2011 went out with a bang for me, in the sense that three of the most important machines in my life experienced a critical mechanical failure:

1) my cellphone died

2) my computer crashed (I haven't yet tried to retrieve data; cross your fingers for me!)

3) the car's transmission failed...or perhaps is failing? I can't be sure because:

3A) I got a flat tire at the same time as the transmission failure, so I can't tell how much of the resultant grinding and jerkiness of the car was due to the transmission and how much to the flat tire.

Oh, and I also developed a topical allergy to coconut oil, which is really inconvenient considering that my preferred soap, shampoo, and deodorant all contain the stuff and straight coconut oil is my favorite winter moisturizer.

So, yeah, 2011 has not been the greatest (and that's not even getting into the earlier part of the year). I'm obscurely reassured by the fact that most of my dwircle and flist also had bad 2011s, and I'll repeat--somewhat belatedly--everyone's wishes for a better new year for all of us!

And I've not really been one for New Year's resolutions, but this year I'm feeling the urge, so:

My 2012 New Year's Resolutions

1) Read a book per week. This past year my fanfiction : published fiction reading ratio was completely unbalanced, and I'd like to correct that a little.
2) Exercise once a week. Obviously, more than once a week would be healthier and better, but it would also be less likely to get done. I'm opting for practicality in this.
3) Post to DW once a week. (This post counts! Only 51 posts to go.)
4) Write a story per month. Last year I wrote ~~ten~~ nine (miscounted due to 3 Ships, which straddles the end of the year) stories, which is actually better than I thought I'd done before I just counted them, but I'd like to write more next year.

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Yuletide recs

jain — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:28:42 GMT

This year I'm dogsitting in an apartment with no internet access and my computer died two days before Christmas, and somehow I've created a list of Yuletide recs anyway. (Compare this to years in which I've had 24/7 internet access and never managed to rec a single story.) I'm putting this amazing feat down to the magic of the Kindle--I go home every day or two to download new fic off the AO3 and then read it at my leisure later--and to my own spirit of perversity.

I'm planning to do a second set of recs just for The Eagle (plus any additional awesome stories I might read between now and then), but for now here are a dozen recs in:

ETA 1/1/12: Author names added.

Projections by ellen_fremedon (Babel-17 -- Samuel R. Delany, Calli/Mollya/Ron) An incredible Mollya character study with elements of Calli/Mollya/Ron and Rydra-Mollya friendship. Mollya was always my favorite, and this story completely does her justice. Beyond the great characterizations and character interactions, this fic includes top-notch worldbuilding, linguistics, and an awesome window into life aboard the ship and the crewmembers’ daily interactions.

And at the Same Time Something Makes You Whole by torakowalski (Billy Elliot, Billy/Michael) Enjoyable and very satisfying story about Billy’s and Michael’s friendship turning to something more. I also really liked Billy’s relationship with his father and brother in this fic. The two of them are very different from him, but all three of them obviously love and try so hard for each other.

Michael Caffrey by Deepdarkwaters (Billy Elliot, gen) Five scenes from Billy’s and Michael’s friendship as they grow up. Sweet and lovely, with some great touches of humor and awesome character voices.

Turn a New Page, Tear the Old One Out by shrift (The Breakfast Club, Brian/Bender) On the off-chance that you were scared off by the “angst” and “death” tags, I’ll say that, unless you have triggers or a pretty massive death squick, this story isn’t likely to cause you any problems. It falls into the tradition of awesome Yuletide Breakfast Club fic, doing something new and interesting with Bender’s growth into a confident and self-assured man and depicting a slowly developing Brian/Bender relationship that feels all the more satisfying for its delayed resolution.

The End and the Way by Luzula (The Left Hand of Darkness -- Ursula K. le Guin, gen) A truly incredible fic that’s both a brilliant exploration of “perversion,” aka unisexuality, in Gethenian society as well as a highly involving coming-of-age/travel-and-adventure story centered on an interesting original female character. Beshem is intelligent, restless, determined, and uncertain about her place in the world both socially and metaphysically...altogether a wonderful narrator with which to explore a previously hidden aspect of Gethenian society. The first scene felt a little clunky to me, which I mention only because it almost made me pass this story by, and I hope no one else makes that mistake; once I got through those first three paragraphs, I found that the rest of the story was beautifully and subtly written.

Lucky Starr and the Divers of Neptune by Kahvi (Lucky Starr series -- Isaac Asimov, Lucky/Bigman) This mystery with its strongly Asimovian feel slots neatly into canon, while also providing a thought-provoking analysis of the future society in the Lucky Starr series. The fic is half rollicking good read and half...equally good read, but with a distinct lack of rollicking.

En Flambé by Vyola (My Drunk Kitchen*, gen) Hannah cooks with fire. Seriously, that’s pretty much all you need to know; this story is hilarious and has a perfect Hannah voice. The illustrations (which I also loved) have text descriptions for accessibility.

Weddings Take the Cake by azurelunatic (My Drunk Kitchen*, gen with femslashy elements) Another laugh-out-loud My Drunk Kitchen fic with an awesome Hannah voice. Hannah bakes a wedding cake for a couple of her friends.

Lost and Found by gleefilled (Nobuta wo Produce, gen with elements of Shittaka/Nobuta and Akira/Nobuta) I don’t really ship Akira/Nobuta except as part of the OT3, so I was a bit hesitant to read this fic, but it turned out to be a gorgeous little story about friendship and growing up that’s very reminiscent of the drama.

Scientific Inquiry by botherd (Rizzoli & Isles, Jane/Maura) A fun, funny, adorable fic in which Maura decides to test a hypothesis. Both she and Jane are perfectly in character; I so wish we could see this on the show!

Alles was ist, endet by myystic (Suits, Harvey/Scotty) This is the pre-series Harvey/Scotty library sex fic I never knew I needed. I thought the episode with Scotty was fun and Scotty herself a fairly interesting character, but I wasn’t upset to see her leave. (I have plenty of even more beloved characters on the show whom I want to watch.) This fic, though! The sex is sizzling, especially if you have a kink for libraries and/or (very mild) exhibitionism and/or sexy women getting off. Scotty’s characterization is a gorgeous expansion of what we saw on the show. But the real draw for me is getting to see a wholly believable glimpse of a younger Harvey Specter, on the verge of becoming a lawyer and less polished than his older self, but already brilliant and quirky and fascinating, just as he is a decade later.

In These Shoes by Siria (Suits, gen) An excellent ficlet about Jessica’s early days as managing partner, her first meeting with Harvey, and some awesome shoes. Jessica is just as smart, sexy, and in control as she is on the show, and the way she and Harvey meet in this fic is totally my personal canon now.

______________
* If you’ve not watched it before, here’s a link to the first episode of My Drunk Kitchen on Youtube. Episodes are only five or so minutes long, and just watching one or two should be enough to familiarize yourself with the fandom.

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Inception: "Home Safe" (Arthur/Eames)

jain — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:15:19 GMT

Title: Home Safe
Author: Jain
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 2946
Summary: Arthur takes Eames to one of his safehouses.
Author's note: Written for bat_hawk for dream_holiday.
Permanent link: "Home Safe" on AO3

"Goddamned buggering fuck," Eames muttered as Arthur unlocked the front door and held it open, letting Eames precede him into the lobby. "Bloody fucking shitting fuck."

Arthur didn't bother hushing him. Eames's voice was low enough not to attract attention, and even if someone were to overhear him, they'd probably attribute his bad temper to the rain soaking his hair and the jacket he was huddled into, arms wrapped tightly about himself as though to conserve warmth. Besides, Eames was entitled to a little annoyance.

Arthur hit the elevator call button--he'd ordinarily take the stairs to the third floor apartment, but that wasn't an option at the moment--and kept a surreptitious eye on Eames. He'd left off cursing a blue streak when the lobby door closed behind them; now his lips pinched together tightly, his face looking pale and haggard.

The elevator pinged as its doors slid open. It was empty, and Eames took advantage of that fact to lean against the wall. Arthur suppressed the somewhat absurd urge to murmur reassurances about Two floors to go and Just one now, we're almost there. He did say, "This is us," when the elevator doors opened and Eames didn't move.

"Yes, thank you, Arthur," Eames said, a thread of completely unnecessary sarcasm in his voice, and somehow managed to give the impression of shouldering past Arthur despite never actually touching him.

Arthur rolled his eyes, then smoothed his expression into placidity before Eames could catch sight of it. "306," he said and followed Eames's careful steps down the hallway. He drew his gun and unlocked the door one-handed; a chin raise in Eames's direction had Eames moving to one side, out of the line of fire. Not that Arthur was expecting trouble--his safehouses were virtually impossible to trace back to him, and he was 99 percent certain that they hadn't been followed--but it was nonetheless better to be prepared.

He eased the door open and saw his alarm system flashing a green light at him. A little of the tension in his stomach eased at the sight, and he quickly typed in his passcode. Still, he cleared all four rooms of the apartment before returning to the front door to wave Eames in.

"Bathroom's right there," he said, pointing, then turned his attention to the column of locks on his door, engaging each one in turn. "Go ahead and get the hot water running in the sink, but don't try to take off your jacket and shirt yet."

There was almost no need for that caution; Arthur made it into the bathroom only fifteen or so seconds behind Eames, who was moving slower and more carefully than usual.

Eames sat down on the closed toilet lid and looked at Arthur expectantly.

"Hang on," Arthur said and unbuttoned Eames's jacket, eased it off his shoulders and down his arms and tossed it into the corner. The lavender dress shirt underneath was soaked through with blood on the left side. "Do you have any communicable diseases that I should be aware of?" he asked, starting on the buttons at Eames's cuffs. He planned to be cautious either way, of course, but Arthur wasn't ever going to not pursue a relevant line of inquiry.

Eames made an aborted movement that might have started out as a shoulder shrug before it became too painful to complete. "Not so far as I know."

Arthur opened his first aid kit and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Undoing the rest of the buttons on Eames's shirt with them on was a challenge, but Arthur managed. He slid the shirt off of Eames and dropped it on top of the jacket.

As he'd suspected, the gash across Eames's ribs was nasty enough to need stitches: maybe three inches long and revealing thin layers of yellow fat and a deeper layer of mostly intact muscle. It was only their assailant's inexperience that meant Eames was still alive. If he'd aimed just a couple inches lower, Eames would have bled out from the resulting gut wound rather than suffer the relatively minor pain of having a knife bounce off one of his floating ribs.

"Are you okay with the floor in here, or are you going to make me sacrifice a set of 400 thread count sheets?" Arthur asked, stripping off his gloves and throwing them away.

"You'd really do that for me?" Eames asked, already sliding down to the floor.

"Sure," Arthur said. "Though I'd make you replace anything you bled on."

"Ah, of course. Always a catch."

Before Eames could lie down on the hard tile, Arthur opened the cabinet under the sink and took out three folded bathtowels that would function as a makeshift pillow. He dropped them on the floor behind Eames. "Get comfy."

"Yes, thank you," Eames said. If he meant the response to be sarcastic this time, he didn't quite manage it. Eames just sounded tired and shocky and a little bit lost.

Arthur pressed his lips together. He was in control of this situation. He was about to make Eames feel even worse than he did at the moment, but afterwards Eames would be fine. He slid open a drawer and took out a washcloth, which he folded in half and handed to Eames. "Bite down on this."

Eames made a face, but put the washcloth between his teeth obligingly enough.

The sluggish water heater in the apartment building had finally done its duty, and faint steam began to rise from the sink. Arthur grabbed his robe off the hook on the door and slid it on backwards, then tied the belt. He scrubbed his hands and arms to the elbows for a full thirty seconds, using plenty of soap, and dried them on a fresh towel.

Then he pulled on another pair of latex gloves to clean the cut, ignoring Eames's hiss of pain. He opened the packet containing an atraumatic suture that was near the top of his first aid kit, and he was ready to go.

"Try not to move," he said. Eames stilled instantly, and Arthur started stitching him up.

Four careful stitches in, Eames said, after a quick gasp, "You know, darling, you're surprisingly unbrutal at this."

"I'm still wielding the poky needle," Arthur said wryly. "Are you sure this is the best time to sling insults about? And 'unbrutal' isn't a word."

"I like helping the evolution of language along," Eames said. His face was very white and his breaths shallow; Arthur couldn't tell if the breathing thing was due to pain or to Arthur's exhortation that Eames not move, and he didn't really want to know.

"Almost done," he murmured.

"I didn't like to ask," Eames said. "But that's--" another gasp as Arthur slid the needle through his skin once more--"that's very good to hear."

"And we're done," Arthur said, tying off the thread one last time and cutting it. "Hold still for the iodine and then you can have some T3 if you want."

"I'd rather have it before, if you don't mind," Eames said. "Preferably twenty minutes ago."

Arthur rolled his eyes even as he splashed iodine liberally on Eames's ribs. "I needed you to be able to give a yell if anything went wrong while I was giving you the stitches."

"And you mean 'give a yell' literally, I take it. How often have you done this before?" Eames asked suspiciously. He craned his head to try to examine Arthur's handiwork, only to let his head drop back with a grunt of pain when the action aggravated his injury.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Arthur slapped a bandage on Eames's ribs and taped it into place, then stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. "You can look at it when it's healed a bit more."

"Don't think I haven't noticed you avoiding my question," Eames said.

Arthur handed him a pill, slid an arm underneath Eames's back to help him to a sitting position, and got him a glass of water from the bathroom tap.

"I had to sew myself up once when a bullet grazed my thigh," Arthur said.

He could see several responses flit through Eames's mind--an anomaly, since as far as he could see Eames usually didn't bother thinking before he spoke--until he finally settled on, "I don't remember that scar. Show me."

This last was said with a lascivious leer. Arthur shook his head.

"Not a good idea," he said quellingly, even as the less noble part of his mind said, Well.... Eames wasn't exactly in terrible shape, despite the stitches, and it had been a while since they'd last hooked up: the 2009 job they'd worked in Venezuela, if Arthur was remembering correctly. He couldn't deny that he was tempted.

"Come on," Eames said. "If you're going to play doctor with me, it should at least be the fun kind of playing doctor."

"That's an awful line," Arthur said, stalling for time.

"My apologies. Can we move this to the bedroom now?"

"Fine," Arthur said, more sharply than he'd intended. From the half-smile on Eames's face, he knew it, too. Either that or he was just being a smug asshole at getting his own way.

Arthur helped Eames to his feet. "I'll be in as soon as I've finished cleaning up in here."

"Of course," Eames said. He brushed a kiss across Arthur's mouth right before he left, soft and dry and frustratingly gentle.

The bathroom wasn't exactly a wreck, despite its being a site of a minor surgery, but there was enough blood smeared around to make it a health hazard. Arthur snapped on another pair of gloves and got to work.

Eames's lavender shirt went straight in the trash, too blood-soaked to be salvageable...or at the very least too ugly for Arthur to justify trying to salvage it. The jacket was in better shape and was midnight blue besides, good for hiding stains; it went into a plastic bag and got tossed into the front hall for Eames to collect later. Lysol wipes took care of the mess on the floor and toilet seat and wall.

Arthur could've gone straight to the bedroom at that point, but he hated leaving a job half done, and in any case it only took another few minutes to repack his first aid kit and to toss the used towels into the laundry hamper.

When he finally reached his bedroom, Eames was lying on the bed with an eminently untrustworthy smile on his face.

"What is it?" Arthur asked, even as he started toeing off his shoes. If he only fucked people he could trust, he'd never get laid.

"What is what?" Eames said innocently.

"That grin."

"Oh." Eames blinked at him in apparent surprise. "Just happy, I suppose."

Arthur snorted. "Just stoned, you mean." He sighed inwardly. He'd hoped that Eames wouldn't be hit too hard by the codeine, but apparently that was too much to wish for. "Okay, raincheck on the sex. Can you keep your hands to yourself if I sleep here, or are you going to make me crash on the couch?"

Eames's lip turned downwards in an honest-to-God pout. "Arthur! Not really."

"Yes, really. So, which is it going to be: bed or couch?"

"You could take a pill, too, and then we'd be equally impaired and wouldn't have to wait to fuck," Eames said, his mind obviously unwilling to jump tracks.

"Considering that we just got attacked a couple of hours ago by men whom we decided to outrun rather than neutralize, I think that that's a very stupid idea. You're pretty out of your head right now, though, so I won't hold it against you."

"Thank you," Eames said, with all appearance of sincerity.

"You're welcome," Arthur said briefly. "Now could you please answer my goddamned question?"

Eames tilted his head to the side. "What question?"

"Am I sleeping on the--"

"Oh, bed," Eames interrupted. "Obviously. Get your shapely arse in here."

Arthur grimaced, but didn't comment further. Either Eames would keep to Arthur's terms, or he wouldn't, and Arthur was more than capable of abandoning his bed if Eames got too handsy.

He stripped down to his boxers and undershirt and slid under the covers. Eames--naked, of course, Arthur noted with some resignation--shifted closer to him. "Eames," he said warningly.

"Platonic cuddles only, darling, I promise," Eames said with an unexpectedly sweet smile that Arthur found himself returning despite himself. "Kiss me goodnight?"

Arthur chuckled and leaned over to press a quick kiss to Eames's mouth. "Goodnight, Mr. Eames."

Arthur blinked his eyes open. Before he could slip out of bed and check his apartment for the source of the disturbance that had awakened him, Eames said, "It's me."

Arthur relaxed minimally. "Eames. Do you need anything?"

"Just to collect a raincheck."

"Hang on," Arthur said quickly. He sat up and reached for the bedside table lamp. "Close your eyes," he said and then followed his own advice as he flicked the switch.

As soon as he was able to reopen his eyes, he looked at Eames assessingly. "How happy are you right now?"

"Happier if I had your cock in me right now," Eames said in a reassuringly dry tone. Not to mention that Arthur could see the faint lines of tension around his mouth, undoubtedly a sign that the T3 was wearing off. He'd get Eames another pill soon, but for now Arthur was willing to try a different sort of pain relief.

Still, that didn't mean there was nothing objectionable in Eames's request. "So that I can sew you up again after you inevitably pop your stitches?" Arthur said. "I don't think so, Eames." Eames opened his mouth, no doubt to protest, and Arthur cut him off. "Just relax, okay? I've got you."

He tugged the blanket aside and slid a hand over Eames's burgeoning erection.

Eames sucked in a sharp breath, a new and altogether better sort of tension growing on his face. "Don't be alarmed if it takes a little extra effort," he said, as if Arthur couldn't figure out for himself that a man in Eames's condition might be a bit distracted by the pain from his eight fucking stitches. "It's not a reflection on you, I promise."

In lieu of a verbal reply, Arthur laid an arm across Eames's lower belly to hold him still and slid his cock into his mouth. Eames tasted almost bland--just clean skin with a hint of salt--but, on the upside, he felt great, his foreskin interestingly loose and pliable on his half-hard cock. Arthur rubbed his tongue against it and felt Eames shiver in response.

Arthur swallowed his smile, which wouldn't exactly be conducive to cocksucking, and rested his head on Eames's stomach, settling in for a long, easy session. A moment later, one of Eames's hands came down to clasp the back of Arthur's neck, his thumb brushing slowly against Arthur's skin, and Arthur had to hold back another smile.

Usually Eames was noisy in bed, but either his pain was holding him back or he'd caught the same sense of almost...peacefulness that Arthur was feeling, as though each wet slide of his tongue and mouth on Eames's cock were like drifting mindlessly in a relaxing bath.

Which wasn't to say that it wasn't hot, too; Arthur's dick had taken an interest in the proceedings thirty seconds in, and a minute after that he'd slipped his hand down to jack himself while blowing Eames. But it was different than their usual, in a way that felt surprisingly intimate and that kept feeling different even after Eames tugged on Arthur's hair in warning and Arthur let him slip out of his mouth, pulling his hand away from his own cock to stroke Eames through his orgasm.

He pressed a kiss to Eames's hip and watched him come down, flushed and breathless and beautiful. "My turn now?" Eames asked languidly after a minute or two.

Arthur kissed his hip again. "I've got it," he said, hand back on his cock; he could feel his own orgasm just in reach, and then it shuddered through him as Eames's hand tightened once more in his hair and then instantly gentled, petting him carefully.

"You know, you just came on my knee," Eames said, his voice thoughtful. Arthur grinned and got up to get a wet washcloth and another pill for Eames.

"Cheers," Eames said when he handed the T3 over with a glass of water, Arthur taking care of the clean-up, as per usual.

"We should do this again sometime," Eames said later, when they were both clean and tucked back under the covers and considerably better-kissed than they had been a few minutes prior.

Arthur frowned into the darkness. "Are you high again?"

"I didn't mean the part where I got stabbed and you had to give me stitches," Eames said reassuringly. "I meant the other bits. The nice bits."

"And answering my actual question..."

"Well, maybe a little," Eames admitted. "But ask me again when I'm sober, and I'll tell you the same thing."

"Yeah, okay, I'll do that," Arthur said flippantly. His realization, as he said the words, that he actually meant them came as something of a surprise. Luckily, Arthur was a pro at assimilating new information. He took just a moment to shrug mentally, then put an arm around Eames--who apparently became half-cat under the influence of opiates and was cuddling up against him once more--and stroked him gently and mindlessly until he fell asleep.

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