meme thing 2.0
29/11/12 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchI should be asleep, etc etc, but I've been working on Yuletide fic and homework and the weekend is coming up and I need something to keep me moving and not get stuck. So! Meme.
This is from LJ and then tumblr and I have no idea where it originated, sorry.
Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)
1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School / College AU
Anything I write will be solidly not!fic, probably, but feel free to give me whatever fandom. You can see the ones I've written on AO3, and I am also happy to write Skyfall Bond and any other fandoms you think I might know.
This is from LJ and then tumblr and I have no idea where it originated, sorry.
Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)
1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School / College AU
Anything I write will be solidly not!fic, probably, but feel free to give me whatever fandom. You can see the ones I've written on AO3, and I am also happy to write Skyfall Bond and any other fandoms you think I might know.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-30 09:45 am (UTC)otherwise, i really want more doctor/master genderswap in my life and that is the truth.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-30 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 10:43 am (UTC)also historical bond is indeed the prompt doomed to damn you, good stuff.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 01:08 am (UTC)Okay, so, I am going with this Hornblower/Bush highschool AU even though I know dangerously little about what actual high school is like.
So Will Bush is in some kind of British high school THING (I know even less about the UK school system than I know about the US school system), and he rolls with Buckland and the other lieutenants from Lieutenant Hornblower, with Captain James Sawyer as the ringleader. Bush doesn't always agree with some of the meaner stuff that Sawyer does, but he likes the other guys in the group, and he's a tall, solid and quiet boy (let me pretend that McGann magically grew while playing Bush, because he's supposed to be kind of imposing in the books and I always liked that). So Bush has a reputation for being the muscle of the group even though he'll only get involved in a fight if the other kid started it or if he needs to drag Sawyer off of someone.
AND THEN MYSTERY TRANSFER STUDENT HORNBLOWER ARRIVES. He is good at math, all the teachers love him, he is strong and silent and dashingly handsome, Bush is kind of suspicious of his perfection for a while but then he caves because, let's be honest, Hornblower looks pretty damn perfect if you are not inside of his own head.
There's the whole plot from Lieutenant Hornblower highschoolized, where Sawyer is bullying Wellard and it goes to far, and Hornblower is trying to work out how to confront Sawyer and doesn't tell Bush because he's not sure if he can trust him. I don't REALLY remember what happened at the end of Lieutenant Hornblower, but Wellard is rescued and Sawyer changes schools and Bush and Hornblower become best friends.
And then summer break happens and they don't see each other for MONTHS until Hornblower is headed to... an arcade... in town and Bush runs into him and invites him over to his house, which is how Hornblower meets Bush's sisters and plays videogames and has dinner with his family and he keeps thinking that Bush will realize that he is TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING and HORRIBLY AWKWARD, but Bush keeps laughing at his jokes and smiling at him generally, and maybe, MAYBE this is that human emotion called friendship which Hornblower has never understood. So he goes and hangs out with Bush nearly every other day until school starts back up again, and then they're kind of separated because Hornblower is in highest honors calculus and Bush is in reasonable junior-level algebra, or what have you, but they still hang out during lunch and after school, and Hornblower thinks it's pretty great to have someone you can rely on like this.
Bush, meanwhile, is basically DYING of crush. He writes WILLIAM BUSH HORNBLOWER in his notebook over and over, and then erases it and then tears all the pages out because Hornblower would totally notice the indentations, he notices everything EXCEPT BUSH'S LOVE.
(Bush's sisters notice. Bush's sisters tease him FOREVER.)
And Bush and Hornblower settle into that dynamic in the books which I kind of love to hate, the one where Bush stares at Hornblower with his eyes full of admiration while Hornblower thinks "I AM A FRAUD, I DO NOT DESERVE THE PLATONIC LOVE OF THIS MAN." And where Hornblower says mean things to Bush just because he's in a bad mood and needs to hurt someone, and Bush looks like someone kicked him in the stomach and Hornblower is like "AGH, I AM THE WORST" until he can say something nice to Bush without it being weird and Bush puffs up like the happiest balloon. And the one where Hornblower showers naked (and with no shower curtain) in the lockerroom while Bush stares at the ceiling and is like "why this, why life," and Hornblower is like "AH YES, THE CIRCULATING AIR FEELS SO WONDERFUL ON MY NETHERS."
(I hear all of Hornblower's thoughts in capslock, all the time, it really improved my reading of the books, I think.)
And finally it is the autumn of senior year, when people in the US would be applying to colleges if they want to go, and I assume something similar is happening in the UK - A-levels? I guess? And Bush is thinking about how Hornblower is going to go and become a high-powered math student, or a policeman, or just generally become amazing and even more perfect and FAR AWAY, while Bush joins the military or something. He has no idea what the fuck he's doing, he just wants to make out with his best friend, okay, is that so much to ask?
And Hornblower can kind of tell what's up, because Bush is even quieter than normal and he looks sad all the time, but Hornblower has NO idea what to do, so he's like "hey, maybe we could go for a hike in the woods? Stop stressing about school?" And in his head he's like "AGH, STUPID IDEA, I AM SO INEPT," but Bush is already saying "that sounds like the best idea I've ever heard," except he sounds MOURNFUL about it, and Hornblower has no idea what to think.
So they go for their hike, and Bush keeps thinking about how they're going to lose touch, and Hornblower keeps thinking "SHOULD I ASK WHAT'S WRONG? NO, I CAN'T, HE IS A MANLY MAN AND WON'T WANT TO TELL ME HIS FEELINGS," and Bush is like "if I don't say something now I'll never know what would have happened," and Hornblower is like "TO HELL WITH IT, I'LL JUST SAY SOMETHING, THE MAN'S MY BEST FRIEND," and this is when Bush misses his step and falls down a bit of a cliff.
"Jesus fuck!" shouts Bush, and "Oh my God," says Hornblower, and Hornblower runs down after him, he nearly falls but makes it down safely, and Bush is lying there with his leg badly twisted under him and Hornblower is thinking "FUCK, WHAT IF HE HAD DIED, WHAT IF, AAAAAGH," and he ends up holding Bush's face in his hands and saying a lot of things out loud that he normally wouldn't really even think, like "Please be okay, please," and "I don't know what I would do without you, Bush, I NEED you," and Bush's leg really really hurts but he is like, well, now or never, and he pushes himself up a bit and actually kisses Hornblower right on the nose, he was aiming for the mouth but this is harder than it looks, and he gets it right on the second go anyway.
And Hornblower was kind of holding Bush up, and now he drops him, and Bush swears.
"Oh," says Hornblower. "Oh."
Bush would be hurt, and he is, kind of, but he's been friends with Hornblower for a while now and he knows that sometimes he needs a while to process.
"Oh," says Hornblower. "That's what all the ripped up pages with WILLIAM BUSH HORNBLOWER written on them meant."
"I like you," says Bush, just to make sure they're clear. "I like you a lot."
"I like you more than anyone," says Hornblower, and he touches his mouth with two fingers like he's still not super sure what's happening.
"Do you want to go out?" asks Bush. "Like, be boyfriends or something?"
"Yes," says Hornblower, because he has figured it out, this is not the human emotion called friendship, this is the human emotion called BOYFRIENDS, my god, how could he have missed it before?
"Also," says Bush, "Could you call 999? Because I think my leg is broken."
"OH MY GOD," says Hornblower, and that is how they end up holding hands in an ambulance as the EMTs swear at them and Hornblower and Bush grin at each other, Bush grinning because he is totally doped up on painkillers and EVERYTHING IS PERFECT, and Hornblower grinning because he's pretty sure if he stops he will start berating himself out loud about ignoring Bush for so long and for it taking a broken leg for him to see the light, and in the end Bush has a cast and crutches for a lot of senior year and Hornblower feels terribly guilty for a long time but it all works out and Bush moves to Cambridge or whatever with Hornblower and gets a job at an auto mechanics, I guess, and Hornblower comes and hangs out at his apartment and they play videogames and have awkward conversations and totally have sex.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 07:16 pm (UTC)how awesome is it that hornblower chases off the school bully? brilliant. although i guess he doesn't have to deal with a potential epic court marshall. man, i love lieutenant hornblower. it is so awesome
and also gay.also, i thought bush was going to die when he fell off the cliff... even though it was rationally too early for that. so, i was relieved when he didn't! and then everything was good :D :D
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 07:17 pm (UTC)perhaps all hornblower's normal and clever thoughts are in regular upper and lower case, but whenever he is trying to cope with HUMAN EMOTIONS it is in upper case.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 07:20 pm (UTC)except mostly it is sex, and not much of the plot.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 10:51 pm (UTC)At first I was kind of like 'high school AU, what do I do with a high school AU,' and then I realized that I am about ten times more invested in Hornblower's life if he's an awkward teenager, so. And I also remembered that Lieutenant Hornblower is totally my favorite Hornblower book.
I think you're right about Hornblower's ALLCAPS and normal type thoughts - my thoughts about HUMAN EMOTIONS are generally in all-caps too...
And I'm excited to read your fic! I just saw the post, so maybe in a bit I will stop trying to write papers and enjoy fanfiction instead.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 11:14 pm (UTC)i love him very much, because of his horrible fail. that's not to say i'd want to be married to or even in love with him, but he is such a falliable character and yet so good. i think that is excellent. (this is just some thoughts about hornblower, now. not related to the high school thing).
i love hornblower playing video games with bush's sisters WHO ALL KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM, though. i love that the most.
this bush icon has seen a lot of use today...
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 03:49 am (UTC)I really like Hornblower as a character - I'm consistently impressed by Forrester's writing and the humanity that he gives to Hornblower despite Hornblower being, on the face of it, your typical good-at-everything action hero. I just also want to shake Hornblower until he stops being a dick. (But this is an urge that I get toward a lot of real human beings, so this is just another testament to Forrester's writing ability.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 05:32 am (UTC)So your awesome Chevalier there is a bit late-period for me, as I'm totally doing this Elizabethan style. I even hauled out my timeline spreadsheet of spies etc from my last failed historical novel, which is why I have casting for you!
M is obvs Robert Cecil, and Q can be Anthony Bacon. 007 is James Tipping and Moneypenny is Michael Moody. Let's have Silva as a Spanish national who was working for Walsingham but had been with M-as-Cecil all along, but then M ditched him as she rose to the Council and Silva got back to Spain (he's totally Edward Talbot, tho, some kind of Spanish Edward Talbot, plus lots of christopher Marlowe). Who am I forgetting? Tanner can be Thomas Heneage, there.
You don't have to actually read the wiki pages, though I realize a lot of these names are probably just noise at this point, just hang with me and I'll try to explain.
So Francis Walsingham basically began the English Crown's secret service in 1582 - before, spying was run on a private basis by each lord with enough money and contacts, but Walsingham built up his own spy network and then gave it all to the Queen through his position as Secretary. Unfortunately for him/every spymaster for the Crown immediately following, he succeeded in creating a national secret service for England but did not manage to get the queen to pay for it. This is why spymasters kept going broke.
Elizabethan spying was mostly an exercise in trying to figure out who was going to stage a revolt, which countries were going to go to war with whom, and finding Catholics and encouraging them to get into trouble. (Catholic entrapment continues for quite a while in British history - the Babbington plot under Walsingham is a good example although the wiki page doesn't necessarily spin it that way, and there's evidence that Guy Fawkes and co were also instigated into action by agents of the Crown.) So most spy work would be long periods of ingratiating yourself with dissenters of one kind or another, foreign nationals, etc. Not so many high-speed chases or death defying stunts, a lot more agent provocateuring.
But most of the spies were still beating each other up all the time, so James Bond fits right in!
Anyway, Walsingham did his thing for a while, and then he died, and Robert Cecil came in as spymaster for his dad William Burghley and the Queen. Cecil got his start by reporting on the machinations of Catholics, natch, specifically the plots to make Lord Strange, shit, wrong link, Lord Strange a Catholic king. Strange was perpetually being linked to Catholic plots as Elizabeth's almost presumptive heir, and in this case he didn't get in MUCH trouble for it, but he didn't win any friends either. (He probably also didn't have anything to do with the plot.) But Cecil came out of it as Walsingham's successor and with a seat on the Queen's Council, and everything going great! Let's call the mashup character Maeve Cecil, and she looks like this and wears a large signet ring with a stylized M on it, agh, I need to take a second, Judi Dench in costume is a little too much-
Ok, back. ANYWAY, M is in on the front seats of government, and all is well, the year is 1591 but don't pay attention to that because I am going to fuck this timeline up and not care. (Too much, anyway.)
Unfortunately for Silva, M's rise to power coincides with him getting arrested in the Netherlands for coining (incidents stolen from Kit Marlowe's life #323), and he and M have been besties for a long time, but it's hard to get an agent out of prison when there's a bunch of countries in between you and him, and Silva's also connected with Strange which is probably not good (incidents stolen from Kit Marlowe's life #324), and M has been facing a lot of questions about why her favorite agent is a Spaniard after that whole Armada thing and she
just
leaves him.
It'll be fine, right? The Dutch are such nice people, they wouldn't pull out any teeth or anything while trying to pump this Spanish/English spy for information, right? They just have windmills and shit, and maybe wooden shoes?
Well, yeah. But they also just had a revolution against their Spanish overlords. And they have a grudge. And they have pliers.
Silva is a little bitter. Dentures in the late 16th century weren't as good as they are now.
Meanwhile, M is building up her organization - she figures out that she can hand off a lot of organization and middle management to Q, AKA Anthony Bacon who is my faaaavorite. Anthony Bacon! Actually Robert Devereux's spymaster, but I can do what I want!
Like, just, sidebar on Anthony Bacon, the man was awesome and also totally gay (his biographer, the novelist Daphne du Maurier, settles on 'virgin and probably asexual but it's the 1970s and I don't know what that is yet,' but she has to explain away a lot of gayness to get there). Bacon spent his days going steadily broke from spymastering and avoiding the Queen like hell - every time Elizabeth granted him an audience he would get spontaneously deathly ill and be confined to his bed, I don't think she ever managed to see him. He walked with a cane and had gout and worked very hard at being despondent at all times and he's my faaavorite, and, uh, he's Q because if I can shoehorn Anthony Bacon into something by god I will shoehorn him into something, and he looks like this, I mean, uh, just imagine yourself some actual Elizabethan Whishaw, sorry. Bacon was more of a cryptography and intelligence clearing house guy, but Q can still have the gadgets, the renaissance was full of gadgets, I mean look at this pistol, that thing looks gorgeous and deadly and it would have been fifty years old by the time Q got on the scene so I'm sure he's already developed a machine gun version that spits greek fire.
ANYWAY, god, sorry, this is what you brought upon yourself, ANYWAY, M has her position and she has her Q and now all she needs are thugs and this is what she gets out of James Tipping and Michael Moody, AKA James Bond and Eve Moneypenny.
So these are guys I don't have convenient wiki links for, because they're fairly low in the priorities of history. They were both spies and instigators and involved in a lot of this Catholic plotting stuff. Tipping meets Moody in the Tower, so they're basically prison buddies. I think it goes like this - Bond is in the Tower first, for general bludgeoning etc, because he is a Scotsman in London and London was hella prejudiced then so Bond caved some skulls in the first time he got mocked. He's just gotten settled in, carved some graffiti on the walls, when Moneypenny gets tossed in the Tower too. She's informing on the other prisoners from day 1 (as was her historical counterpart Moody), and she figures she'll get out soon enough except then Bond finds out she's been ratting. She figures they'll have a huge fight and she'll probably have to stab Bond to death, but all Bond says is 'so, how do I get in on this?' And they become an unstoppable spying and instigating team, and the Tower has three riots and some annoying nobles that the Queen wishes would go away get mysteriously stabbed, and the upshot is that when Bond and Moneypenny get out Tanner is waiting for them with a coach and M is sitting inside of the coach with a smile, a handshake, and a big bag of coins to be exchanged for continued service.
To catch us up - Daniel Craig apparently never did Shakespeare, he's a travesty to the fine British tradition of wearing silly clothing, so let's just pretend he's wearing a jerkin here, because the scruffy beard is just about right for the time period. Naomie Harris has also not done the Shakespeare thing, travesty, I tell you, so here are just some pictures of her fine self and remember, if anyone tries to tell you there weren't black people in Elizabethan London, kick them in the kneecap and run before they get any more ignorance on you. and Tanner is subbing for Thomas Heneage, who was a mid-range spy and nobleman with Walsingham and then Cecil, he was Moody's handler, and luckily enough Rory Kinnear has done tons of Shakespeare so he looks like this.
And FINALLY, all the pieces are set and I can get into the plot.
So Bond and Moneypenny are working on the Yorke-Williams plot together. It's basically another Catholic plot, probably helped along by the secret service, this time with the added bonus of Spanish ties which meant it could be blown up into anti-Spanish propaganda. But the threat to the Crown is still a big deal, and Bond and Moneypenny are funneling information out and trying not to be discovered and, whoops, somebody makes Bond, his disguise as an English-hating Scotsman is not QUITE believable enough despite being mostly the truth.
And the plotters tell Moneypenny to shoot him, since she actually has a firearm handy and is half-way accurate (lots of conspirators had guns at the time, very few had any aim). And Moneypenny looks at Bond, they've taken him out to the banks of the Thames, and it's the dead of night and it's the new moon so it's just black out, totally dark, and the lantern-light glints off of Bond's cheekbones, and Moneypenny can almost hear M's voice in her ear saying 'keep the cover, protect the crown, take the shot,' and her fingers tighten on the trigger and Bond jerks and spins as he falls into the water.
Moneypenny thinks she hit him in the shoulder. She's sure she did. But the gun pulls to the right, sometimes, and the current carried Bond away before she could get a good look.
Moneypenny goes on to turn in everyone who was involved in the Yorke-Williams plot, gets a huge bonus and a pat on the back from M, and she feels like shit the whole time.
Bond floats down the Thames to the far bank of outer London, drags himself out, gets stitched up and then probably goes to the White Hart and gets drunk for three weeks with Robert Poley, because he's a dick.
(Robert Poley is another spy connected with basically all of these guys, let's say he's Felix Leiter, whatever.)
Anyway, it turns out that there's not a Spanish connection to the Yorke-Williams plot for nothing, Silva is TOTALLY back and totally blows up Q's house while Q is out.
Why not M's house, you ask? Because everything bad in the world of Elizabethan spies happened to the middle-managing spy master, and Q puts down his cane and gingerly falls to his knees and thinks about how he is going totally broke because he does not live in an era where the Crown actually has a secret service budget and everything is coming out of his pocket and NOW HE HAS TO BUY A NEW HOUSE.
Also all of his codebooks and tools and shit were in there.
So Bond hears about the explosion and comes to check on M ad everybody and Moneypenny is like 'you bastard, you're alive?' and Bond is like 'I've been in the pub literally the whole time, you could have just crossed the bridge and joined my bender,' and Moneypenny thinks about shooting him again.
We can skip the whole psychological test thing and the fitness test because the spy system isn't that codified yet and they don't know what a psychology is, anyway, and let's also skip the Severine thing because it made me uncomfortable in the movie. But let's keep Bond's first meeting with Q because it would be GREAT, Q's young and kind of sickly, with his delicate wood-and-filigree cane, and Bond is older and buff and disdainful, and he's thinking 'I could totally take my spymaster in a fight' and being generally obnoxious and finally Q just says 'my cane shoots poison darts, by the way, isn't it lovely, I could arrange for a personal demonstration.'
And Bond is like, um, no, sorry, maybe I should go track down the guy who blew up your house for you, except he says it in a more manly way, and Q glares at him short-sightedly (glasses have been invented, but Q doesn't wear his often because they give him headaches as no one knows what astigmatism is yet), and Moneypenny watches them and laughs and laughs.
I'm kind of stalling out here, but the rest is basically the show-down between Silva and M and Bond. And Silva and Bond probably make out at some point, because it turns out the only way you can make Silva more sexually assertive and into dudes is by combining him with Kit Marlowe and Edward Talbot. By the way, Javier Bardem has not done Shakespeare, I guess he gets a pass for being Spanish, but he does smoke cigars while not wearing a real shirt, so.
Anyway, M doesn't die at Skyfall, because who's going to ride all the way to Scotland when she can face down Silva in the streets of her London, and I'm going to say that Bond is way more conflicted about getting involved now that he's gotten up close and personal with Silva's tongue, so he stands back as Silva and M duel in the streets.
I know this started out self-indulgent and now it's just getting WORSE, but come on, can't you see it, Silva and M with dueling rapiers and the citizens of London scattering around them, I have an old dueling book that talks about using your cloak as a shield in your off-hand and M rips her overskirt and uses that instead, whipping it at Silva as she tries to cut his head off, and Silva kicks over an applecart and the apples roll across the street and people are tripping and Silva is laughing and M parried his lunge but he has a dagger in his other hand, aimed right at M's eye-
and this is when Moneypenny shoots him in the back, the gun pulled to the right a little so she meant to hit him in the shoulder but she got him in the spine instead. She doesn't feel very regretful as he crumples.
And now the street is full of terrified people and broken carts and a dead body, and Q hobbles up and thinks 'oh god, I hope I don't have to pay for any of this.'
And I think Eve and M probably go somewhere private and make out, because why not, let's go there, life-affirming make outs are appropriate for all eras and ages.
(Bond teaches Q the ways of the post-mission bender, but Q gets ill and does not appreciate it.)
The end! I hope you, uh, actually wanted any of this.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 05:38 pm (UTC)For some reason I keep thinking that Robert Cecil may have written poetry (then again, lots of nobles did), or maybe I'm thinking of another Cecil. Hm...
I think this is my favorite part: It'll be fine, right? The Dutch are such nice people, they wouldn't pull out any teeth or anything while trying to pump this Spanish/English spy for information, right? They just have windmills and shit, and maybe wooden shoes? Well, yeah. But they also just had a revolution against their Spanish overlords. And they have a grudge. And they have pliers.
And I love how Q just keeps having ALL THE BAD THINGS happen to him for like no good reason other than he's in the middle of the spy network. XD
Actually, THIS is probably my favorite part because it's PERFECT: Bond is in the Tower first, for general bludgeoning etc, because he is a Scotsman in London and London was hella prejudiced then so Bond caved some skulls in the first time he got mocked.
can't you see it, Silva and M with dueling rapiers and the citizens of London scattering around them, I have an old dueling book that talks about using your cloak as a shield in your off-hand and M rips her overskirt and uses that instead, whipping it at Silva as she tries to cut his head off, and Silva kicks over an applecart and the apples roll across the street and people are tripping...
YES. YES, I CAN TOTALLY SEE IT!!
This entire thing is just perfection, I love it! :D :D
no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 03:07 am (UTC)I don't believe Robert Cecil did poetry, although the Cecil/Burghley family did a lot of patronage stuff. Cecil and his immediate family were all diehard politicians that don't seem to have made much time for anything else.
Moran and Moriarty kidfic - gen, but watch out for all the blood and death.
Date: 2012-12-28 10:08 pm (UTC)Anyway, I feel like the stories I have seen with these characters + kids before usually involve Jim turning up with a kid because he's wacky or whatever, which is admittedly a good description. But in this story it is Seb who brings in the child. Let's say he was out on a hit and got the target (obviously) but it turns out the target had a kid that Seb didn't know about, more of a baby still, and Seb kept the murder quiet so the police won't be coming for a good long while and the kid is on its own here, and Seb thinks about calling the cops himself but that's a bad idea for lots of obvious reasons, and finally Seb just picks up the baby and goes, because he's not the best at dealing with unexpected situations.
Well, he is pretty good at unexpected situations. It's just that his default response is violence and he doesn't want to try and apply that here.
Seb and Jim aren't living together in this continuity, so Seb spends a good week trying to track down the kid's relatives and not having any luck and trying not to kill the kid by accident. And then Jim drops by unexpectedly and Seb can't answer the door because he's holding the baby upside-down and trying to heat formula on the stove while digging out a new pack of diapers and eat his own lunch. And Jim finishes picking the lock open just when Seb has gotten himself kicked in the face by the baby, and is trying to hold his nose and not drop the kid at the same time, and his shirt is covered in spilled formula,
and
Jim
stares.
Seb has no idea what to do with a baby, so he's been playing it by ear and google searches. But Jim has seven siblings (four surviving, don't ask), so he takes charge pretty quickly. Seb is worried about what this will mean for the kid, but he also wasn't looking forward to changing that diaper again, so he gives in without much of a fight.
Jim is TORN here - on the one hand, baby! Baby that he can raise to be the heir to his criminal empire! He can teach it how to smile properly, and how to lie, and how to count cards, and how to kill someone with a paperclip. It'll be awesome.
On the other hand, Jim knows stories, and he knows that raising the child of someone you've killed and teaching the child lots of skills relevant to avenging their parent's death is generally not a good idea. A better idea would be to leave the child at a police station in another country and let them deal with it. The best idea would be to kill the child. Less complicated. Less travel time involved.
The baby gurgles, and smiles a gummy smile at Jim. He is unmoved. But there's Seb, with the little furrow between his brows that means he knows what Jim is thinking and he doesn't like it - Seb won't do anything to stop Jim, he knows better, but he'll sulk for MONTHS, it'll be Moscow all over again.
So Jim bounces the baby until it's laughing and says "We're naming him Sebastian, Seb."
"It's a girl," says Seb.
"Stop enforcing gender on such a small thing," says Jim. "We're naming zie Sebastian."
In the end small Seb grows up and identifies as female after all, and she does eventually revenge herself on Moriarty's criminal empire. Lots of fire, lots of explosions, lots of small Seb's extremely deranged grin. There's probably a very touching moment where Jim is coughing up blood and saying things like "that's my girl," and I'm not sure how if this ends happily or badly but I've got a very strong image of a bloody-but-alive Jim on the floor as small Seb points a gun at him and Seb points a gun at her.
And Seb says "I'm the one who killed your father, I pulled the trigger-"
And small Seb says "You're wrong, Jim pulled the trigger, you're just another weapon that he uses-"
And Jim laughs as the warehouse burns down around him, because he knew it would come to this and he did it anyway.
And that's how you get from cracky baby fic to major Jim and Seb angst in about five minutes.
Re: Moran and Moriarty kidfic - gen, but watch out for all the blood and death.
Date: 2012-12-29 12:03 am (UTC)Hah! Happily, from Jim's perspective, I'm sure, with all that paternal pride he's got to be feeling. Also, love the Reservoir Dogs image in this snippet.
Great stuff!
Re: Moran and Moriarty kidfic - gen, but watch out for all the blood and death.
Date: 2012-12-29 02:27 am (UTC)