Fic: Mini-Nanowrimo Sanctuary Drabbles
For Mini-nanowrimo this year, I committed to 100 words a day as a minimum, with the intention of writing (at least) one drabble a day. Many, though not all, were inspired by/derived from/influenced by the "And for your inspiration" things -- the quote, one or more of the words or the picture. Usually I would start writing and by the first few words I would know what fandom it was going to be. Sometimes I knew before I even started writing. The Highlander and Fannish One-Off drabbles will have their own posts. These are the Sanctuary drabbles, in order of being written.
Day 1: Sanctuary - James
Gowk
James Watson had been an awkward, thin and angular child, his head seeming too large for his narrow frame, his gaze too heavy. As a youth he was all spidery long limbs and prickly defenses - no science at all to his fist when forced into a physical confrontation, but a devastating tongue and wit. The upper-form boys freely apostrophized him as a gowk, a blighter, a sad excuse for a boy who would never be a proper Winchester man. By Oxford, though, gawkiness had transformed into grace well hidden under formidable intellect, a privacy revealed only to a trusted few.
Prompt: gawkiness
On AO3
Day 3: Sanctuary - James/John
Waterfall
The water tumbled over the edge of the precipice, mist rising up like smoke where water met rock and tumbled back upward scattered into wisps. In the cave hollowed out by the cascade, two bodies clung and strove in equal unrestraint, groans and cries lost in the thunder. Wet moss cushioned spread knees, arching back, pillowed a tossing dark head as the other pressed inward, inexorable as the rushing torrent. They moved urgently, ecstatically, driven with need, and when they came, one after the other, orgasm poured through them, as violent as the waterfall, leaving them shattered as the spray.
Prompt words: Thundercloud, Groan
On AO3
Day 5: Sanctuary - Declan, Declan/James
Stolid, Solid
There were those who considered Declan stolid, unflappable, even cold. People who did not look beyond the strike-team shoulders, saw in short hair, firm jaw and level gaze only the soldier, heard only London in his accent, parade-ground in his voice, believed competence and strength of blunt-tipped, nimble hands only when fisted for a fight, filled with gun or blade. All commando, not compassion. But patience, calm, and sense do not preclude deep feeling, and because most did not go beneath the surface, they missed the intellect, humor, passion and capacity for love that James recognized and loved in return.
They would never see the man shuddering, erect and wet in James’ hand, unstrung and vulnerable as he came apart, so responsive to James’ need, desire, touch; grinning up from between James’ legs, eyes bright with both lust and love. Appreciate the man who met the world with deadpan humor, wit and keen sense of the ridiculous. Could not imagine him cradling a tiny hedgehoglet in careful fingers, teaching a child how to feed it; or speaking with gentle seriousness to a distressed yellow slime-mold with his own grief raw and new. They would never know the real Declan MacRae.
Prompt words Stolid, Wet, Supine
On AO3
Day 6: Sanctuary - Gregory, Helen, James - Dryad
Fraxinus Meliai
The dryad in the garden never spoke to Gregory Magnus. (That the slender ash was F. Meliai, not merely F. Excelsior was only one of the reasons Gregory acquired the house, and not the most persuasive.) Certainly not after he chose to enclose the trunk with iron, however aesthetic the fence or inviting the bench. Young Helen, escaping her nursemaid, would scramble up and reach through the spears to press small palms against silver bark and talk to the tree, seeing leaf-haired, dancing figures in her dreams. It was Watson, though, who saw the fence removed, the Quick aspect freed.
On AO3
Day 11: Sanctuary - Clara Griffin
Water Sprite
As a child, water was one of Clara’s favorite playthings: water sprinklers, rain showers and sea-spray, fountains of all sorts. Sprinklers and fountains that came up from the ground and rained back down were the best. She like it because water was like her - invisible but present, liquid and quick and able to go places and do things all out of proportion to size and age and apparent strength. She was invisible! She could take any shape, go any where, do any thing she wished.
As she got older, she forgot that joy, that wideness of imagination, forgot the strength of water (go anywhere, wear away at any thing, patient and powerful, creeping through, around, under, over any obstacle. She remembered only that it could reveal her - make her visible - in ways little else could.
With Will’s encouragement (embarrassed, yes, but not actually hesitating to do what she needed even as he protested) at Bhalasaam, she found once more that strength that was hers and water’s both, and with his sincere affection, good looks, and most of all his effortless ability to always see her not just her abnormality, she rediscovered the joy and delight of dancing in the rain.
On AO3
Day 14: Sanctuary - general - Stones
Saxum Cumularum
There is a creature that lives on beaches and riverbanks, near the edges of ponds and in tide pools that builds. It stacks rocks one atop the other in pleasing and meaningful towers. It collects bits of wood and shell and seaweed and arranges them in intricate spiraling shapes. It makes little mazy paths in sand and pebbles that draw the eye toward the water or away into the middle distance. But mostly, it puts one flat rock upon another, and another atop that, reaching up from the intersection of water and earth to the airy fire of the sky.
On AO3
Day 15: Sanctuary - Declan - Monsters
Fauna Monstruosus
Some of the creatures they dealt with in the Sanctuary network were what nearly anyone would call monsters: large, dangerous, frightening, destructive to other life; their appearance going to atavistic places in the human (and human-variant) psyche, invoking horror, revulsion, disgust in any and all senses (slimy, sticky, tentacled, smelling of carrion and decay, disturbingly quick, distressingly shaped, all sights, sounds, and textures of figures out of nightmare, the visions of Geiger and Lovecraft). But Declan -and James before him - knew that the true monsters were the ones with minds capable of awareness and reason, who acted out of choice.
On AO3
Day 17: Sanctuary - general - Steel and Gold
Fauna Maritimus Insolitus
The sea was steel and gold in the low light of winter sunset, laced with white foam and the frothy spray of wind-whipped wave tops. Ribbons of silver marked the curves where fins and tails and salt-slick bodies cut through the towering, smooth faces of the waves as they raced toward the beach; selkies and mer-folk and other peoples of the open water dancing in the lively ocean, daring the surf and the close rocky shore. It was far too cold for scant-haired humans, but those with fur or scales or feathers reveled in the mist-bright air and dark water.
On AO3
Day 20: Sanctuary - Will
Bridge Toll
It was a bridge of rope and shining wood, curving over a tumultuous river, rushing and frothing and dark with mud. Will wondered if they were going to encounter a lurking troll on this expedition in addition to everything else. Or if not a troll, what the toll would be. He had learned to distrust things that looked straightforward, especially in bright sunlight (it was easier to be wary and suspicious at night or in the dark.)
So he really wasn’t surprised when the bushes rattled as they stepped off the bridge, and several tall figures barred their way forward.
On AO3
Day 25: Sanctuary - John
Watching
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. ~Colette
John had not been able to bear watching James and Helen when they were both at the London Sanctuary. He had not wanted to know if they were together as a couple, especially not in the house that held so many memories for him as well as them. But once Helen established the Old City Sanctuary, and James took over as Head in truth in London, he allowed himself the painful pleasure of observing them. Oddly, he discovered he never minded (was, indeed, often aroused) to see them with other lovers. It was the nights they slept alone that hurt.
On AO3
Day 29: Sanctuary - General - Vines
Hedera Helix Mutabilis
The London Sanctuary is an old building, built on the foundations of buildings older still. The banks of the Thames have been lived on for a very long time, by many different peoples and beings. In one corner of the garden (and there has always be a corner there, or near - of tumbled rocks, of withys, of shaped stone, brick, clay and plaster, earth or wood) grows a vine. Much of the time it looks and acts like ivy or wisteria, occasionally clematis or grapevine or even climbing rose. It is a Chameleon vine, and even the Ash respects it.
On AO3
Day 1: Sanctuary - James
Gowk
James Watson had been an awkward, thin and angular child, his head seeming too large for his narrow frame, his gaze too heavy. As a youth he was all spidery long limbs and prickly defenses - no science at all to his fist when forced into a physical confrontation, but a devastating tongue and wit. The upper-form boys freely apostrophized him as a gowk, a blighter, a sad excuse for a boy who would never be a proper Winchester man. By Oxford, though, gawkiness had transformed into grace well hidden under formidable intellect, a privacy revealed only to a trusted few.
Prompt: gawkiness
On AO3
Day 3: Sanctuary - James/John
Waterfall
The water tumbled over the edge of the precipice, mist rising up like smoke where water met rock and tumbled back upward scattered into wisps. In the cave hollowed out by the cascade, two bodies clung and strove in equal unrestraint, groans and cries lost in the thunder. Wet moss cushioned spread knees, arching back, pillowed a tossing dark head as the other pressed inward, inexorable as the rushing torrent. They moved urgently, ecstatically, driven with need, and when they came, one after the other, orgasm poured through them, as violent as the waterfall, leaving them shattered as the spray.
Prompt words: Thundercloud, Groan
On AO3
Day 5: Sanctuary - Declan, Declan/James
Stolid, Solid
There were those who considered Declan stolid, unflappable, even cold. People who did not look beyond the strike-team shoulders, saw in short hair, firm jaw and level gaze only the soldier, heard only London in his accent, parade-ground in his voice, believed competence and strength of blunt-tipped, nimble hands only when fisted for a fight, filled with gun or blade. All commando, not compassion. But patience, calm, and sense do not preclude deep feeling, and because most did not go beneath the surface, they missed the intellect, humor, passion and capacity for love that James recognized and loved in return.
They would never see the man shuddering, erect and wet in James’ hand, unstrung and vulnerable as he came apart, so responsive to James’ need, desire, touch; grinning up from between James’ legs, eyes bright with both lust and love. Appreciate the man who met the world with deadpan humor, wit and keen sense of the ridiculous. Could not imagine him cradling a tiny hedgehoglet in careful fingers, teaching a child how to feed it; or speaking with gentle seriousness to a distressed yellow slime-mold with his own grief raw and new. They would never know the real Declan MacRae.
Prompt words Stolid, Wet, Supine
On AO3
Day 6: Sanctuary - Gregory, Helen, James - Dryad
Fraxinus Meliai
The dryad in the garden never spoke to Gregory Magnus. (That the slender ash was F. Meliai, not merely F. Excelsior was only one of the reasons Gregory acquired the house, and not the most persuasive.) Certainly not after he chose to enclose the trunk with iron, however aesthetic the fence or inviting the bench. Young Helen, escaping her nursemaid, would scramble up and reach through the spears to press small palms against silver bark and talk to the tree, seeing leaf-haired, dancing figures in her dreams. It was Watson, though, who saw the fence removed, the Quick aspect freed.
On AO3
Day 11: Sanctuary - Clara Griffin
Water Sprite
As a child, water was one of Clara’s favorite playthings: water sprinklers, rain showers and sea-spray, fountains of all sorts. Sprinklers and fountains that came up from the ground and rained back down were the best. She like it because water was like her - invisible but present, liquid and quick and able to go places and do things all out of proportion to size and age and apparent strength. She was invisible! She could take any shape, go any where, do any thing she wished.
As she got older, she forgot that joy, that wideness of imagination, forgot the strength of water (go anywhere, wear away at any thing, patient and powerful, creeping through, around, under, over any obstacle. She remembered only that it could reveal her - make her visible - in ways little else could.
With Will’s encouragement (embarrassed, yes, but not actually hesitating to do what she needed even as he protested) at Bhalasaam, she found once more that strength that was hers and water’s both, and with his sincere affection, good looks, and most of all his effortless ability to always see her not just her abnormality, she rediscovered the joy and delight of dancing in the rain.
On AO3
Day 14: Sanctuary - general - Stones
Saxum Cumularum
There is a creature that lives on beaches and riverbanks, near the edges of ponds and in tide pools that builds. It stacks rocks one atop the other in pleasing and meaningful towers. It collects bits of wood and shell and seaweed and arranges them in intricate spiraling shapes. It makes little mazy paths in sand and pebbles that draw the eye toward the water or away into the middle distance. But mostly, it puts one flat rock upon another, and another atop that, reaching up from the intersection of water and earth to the airy fire of the sky.
On AO3
Day 15: Sanctuary - Declan - Monsters
Fauna Monstruosus
Some of the creatures they dealt with in the Sanctuary network were what nearly anyone would call monsters: large, dangerous, frightening, destructive to other life; their appearance going to atavistic places in the human (and human-variant) psyche, invoking horror, revulsion, disgust in any and all senses (slimy, sticky, tentacled, smelling of carrion and decay, disturbingly quick, distressingly shaped, all sights, sounds, and textures of figures out of nightmare, the visions of Geiger and Lovecraft). But Declan -and James before him - knew that the true monsters were the ones with minds capable of awareness and reason, who acted out of choice.
On AO3
Day 17: Sanctuary - general - Steel and Gold
Fauna Maritimus Insolitus
The sea was steel and gold in the low light of winter sunset, laced with white foam and the frothy spray of wind-whipped wave tops. Ribbons of silver marked the curves where fins and tails and salt-slick bodies cut through the towering, smooth faces of the waves as they raced toward the beach; selkies and mer-folk and other peoples of the open water dancing in the lively ocean, daring the surf and the close rocky shore. It was far too cold for scant-haired humans, but those with fur or scales or feathers reveled in the mist-bright air and dark water.
On AO3
Day 20: Sanctuary - Will
Bridge Toll
It was a bridge of rope and shining wood, curving over a tumultuous river, rushing and frothing and dark with mud. Will wondered if they were going to encounter a lurking troll on this expedition in addition to everything else. Or if not a troll, what the toll would be. He had learned to distrust things that looked straightforward, especially in bright sunlight (it was easier to be wary and suspicious at night or in the dark.)
So he really wasn’t surprised when the bushes rattled as they stepped off the bridge, and several tall figures barred their way forward.
On AO3
Day 25: Sanctuary - John
Watching
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. ~Colette
John had not been able to bear watching James and Helen when they were both at the London Sanctuary. He had not wanted to know if they were together as a couple, especially not in the house that held so many memories for him as well as them. But once Helen established the Old City Sanctuary, and James took over as Head in truth in London, he allowed himself the painful pleasure of observing them. Oddly, he discovered he never minded (was, indeed, often aroused) to see them with other lovers. It was the nights they slept alone that hurt.
On AO3
Day 29: Sanctuary - General - Vines
Hedera Helix Mutabilis
The London Sanctuary is an old building, built on the foundations of buildings older still. The banks of the Thames have been lived on for a very long time, by many different peoples and beings. In one corner of the garden (and there has always be a corner there, or near - of tumbled rocks, of withys, of shaped stone, brick, clay and plaster, earth or wood) grows a vine. Much of the time it looks and acts like ivy or wisteria, occasionally clematis or grapevine or even climbing rose. It is a Chameleon vine, and even the Ash respects it.
On AO3