Mint In Box by sabinelagrande (PG-15)
Title: Mint In Box
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairing: Phil Coulson/Steve Rogers
Categories: Horror, Angst, Romance, Dark, Canon Divergence, Open Ending
Length: Medium (6465 words)
Warnings: Kidnapping, Imprisonment, Stockholm Syndrome, Canon Character Death, Drug Use (to inhibit the Supersoldier serum), Mental Illness, Physical Illness
Author on LJ: sabinetzin
Author Website: sabinelagrande
Author's Summary:
But the longer Steve spends in Coulson's hands, the more foxing appears.
Review:
An alternate but chillingly believable twist on the 'Coulson Lives' trope, where Phil comes back, but not quite right.
The Phil Coulson of Mint In Box exists in a peculiar limbo, physically alive but slowly succumbing to the lingering pall that death cast over him, a strange and twisted caricature of himself. In some ways he is magnified, such as his devotion to his collection of Captain America memorabilia, but the rest of him is muted and cold, frozen through like permafrost.
And so, devoted and obsessively so, he kidnaps Steve and imprisons him in a basement that seems less like a cell and more like a secure and climate-controlled case for a priceless collector's item. The world narrows to just the two of them, and within the confines of that basement in the house that no one knows about, the dynamic between them slowly shifts from kidnapper-kidnappee to tentative friends to something else that is both less and more, creeping along like a layer frost spreading over the ground.
But perhaps most chilling of all is the story's open yet tragic ending, because there is no truly hopeful future for them, just the illusion of one.
Mint In Box
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairing: Phil Coulson/Steve Rogers
Categories: Horror, Angst, Romance, Dark, Canon Divergence, Open Ending
Length: Medium (6465 words)
Warnings: Kidnapping, Imprisonment, Stockholm Syndrome, Canon Character Death, Drug Use (to inhibit the Supersoldier serum), Mental Illness, Physical Illness
Author on LJ: sabinetzin
Author Website: sabinelagrande
Author's Summary:
But the longer Steve spends in Coulson's hands, the more foxing appears.
Review:
An alternate but chillingly believable twist on the 'Coulson Lives' trope, where Phil comes back, but not quite right.
The Phil Coulson of Mint In Box exists in a peculiar limbo, physically alive but slowly succumbing to the lingering pall that death cast over him, a strange and twisted caricature of himself. In some ways he is magnified, such as his devotion to his collection of Captain America memorabilia, but the rest of him is muted and cold, frozen through like permafrost.
And so, devoted and obsessively so, he kidnaps Steve and imprisons him in a basement that seems less like a cell and more like a secure and climate-controlled case for a priceless collector's item. The world narrows to just the two of them, and within the confines of that basement in the house that no one knows about, the dynamic between them slowly shifts from kidnapper-kidnappee to tentative friends to something else that is both less and more, creeping along like a layer frost spreading over the ground.
But perhaps most chilling of all is the story's open yet tragic ending, because there is no truly hopeful future for them, just the illusion of one.
Mint In Box