Commentfic dump
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Cas
Rating: G
Prompt: Supernatural, Any angel, For angels it's not so much being resurrected back to life as being rearranged back to consciousness.
When Castiel dies, it's not death in the way humans perceive it.He simply scatters, spread thin across the universe.
Here he sees a war-torn village; there he hears the babbling brook in a fisherman's heaven. He burns in the center of a star and feels the never-ending void of a black hole. He drifts, and pulls together, and opens his eyes.
(For if there is one thing Castiel has never been good at, it's accepting fate.)
*
Title: Bunny Rabbit
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, Sam, random beastie
Rating: PG
Prompt: Supernatural, author’s choice, Dean Winchester is not the hostage you want to take
From your vantage point, you size up the two hunters. They're dressed in suits and pull their badges out with professional airs, but they couldn't be more obvious if they were running around dark old buildings dressed in flannel with salt shells in their guns.
The big one is, well, big. He looks like he could total a Hummer with a misstep. You decide you really don't want to get in the way of those hands and turn to look over the other.
By normal standards, he's a perfectly average-sized man, but next to his partner he looks like a bunny rabbit. A bunny rabbit with a handgun and a hipflask, to be sure, but a bunny rabbit nonetheless.
You follow them, darting from rooftop to rooftop, and when the shorter one blows the other off and heads for the nearest bar you don't even have to think about which one to stick with. Your target takes a shortcut through a dark alley (honestly, how cliché; do hunters never learn?) and you take your chance, leaping down on him in the dark.
Big mistake.
You misjudge your fall, just like you misjudged your quarry, and instead of landing on his shoulders like you planned you land crouched and hissing on the ground just behind. He whirls and you leap, and you realize your mistake when the knife is driven through your gut.
As the light fades from your eyes, you belatedly remember that bunny rabbits were known by the people who once feared you as a god, and always more difficult to catch than they appeared.
*
Title: Had Weirder Days
Fandom: Doctor Who/Warehouse 13/Firefly/X Files/Battlestar Galactica (2003)/Supernatural
Characters: Canton, Valda, Badger, Bob, Lampkin, Crowley
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any show with a Mark Sheppard character/any other show(s) with a Mark Sheppard character, any, author's choice
Canton edged down the dim hallway, gun in hand. Overhead, the fluorescents flickered. On his left there was only blank wall; to the right was a door marked "MAS". He paused briefly to turn the safety off, and burst through the door.
"I demand to know where I am!" Valda yelled, banging a fist down on the table.
"Aw, siddown and get that stick outta your pigu," Badger drawled, tipping his bowler to one side.
"Here, mate, have a smoke." Bob the Caretaker produced a cigarette from his shirt pocket, offering it carelessly to the Regent. A cat streaked down the table, knocking into both. Bob went careening into Badger, who shoved him back the way he'd come. "Dammit, Lampkin, if you can't control that damn cat I'll set its tail on fire! See how fast it'll run then."
"Apologies," Lampkin said, sounding not at all apologetic as he scooped Lance back into his bag.
"Oh will all of you just shaddup!" Crowley snapped his fingers, and all jaws forcefully snapped shut. "Much better. Not that this isn't a lovely little chat, but what the hell are you all doing in my house?"
*
Title: In Rather More Than Two Dimensions
Fandom: Harry Potter/Sherlock BBC
Characters: Albus Severus, John, Sherlock
Rating: G
Notes: Inspired by this drawing of John and Sherlock as Hogwarts paintings by Fensterseifer.
There's a painting in a little-used corridor on the sixth floor. To the few students who know of it it's called just "the Couple," because no one's ever been able to get the subjects to tell them their real names.
In his head, Al has taken to calling them Scarf and Tea, though he'd never tell them that.
"Oh, it's you again, is it," Scarf sniffs when Al walks into view of the frame.
"Be nice," Tea chides. "Hello, Al."
"Hullo." Today Scarf is dressed in a white bedsheet and little else, though his famous scarf is draped over the sofa arm on the edge of the frame. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"
Tea chuckles. "No, it's all right. How was class?"
"He dropped an ink bottle, got an E in Potions, and tried to ask Rory Elkins to the dance. Failed miserably, of course." Scarf rattles off his deductions cooly, but Al can hear the underlying affection in his tone.
"Yeah, I did." Al shrugs sheepishly. "It was a longshot anyhow. Score keeps getting in the way."
"Sounds vaguely familiar." Tea smiles, shooting a sidelong glance at his fellow portrait. "You've got to find a way to ask them that sounds confident without arrogance," he advised.
"Like you've had any great success with women." Scarf rolls his eyes.
"I'll have you know I was quite chased-after in my day," Tea tells him. "'Three Continents,' they called me."
Scarf comes back with a usual witty retort. Al grins and leans back to watch the show as they snipe at each other; the bickering of epic proportions is always well worth the hike up to the sixth floor.
*
Title: House of Mirrors
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Moriarty
Rating: PG
Prompt: Here on the meme.
early in the morning and late at night
two dead boys got up to fight
back to back they faced each other
drew their swords and shot each other
It is that paradoxical time of night, at the very strike of twelve, neither yesterday nor tomorrow. Two dead men stand in the house of mirrors at an abandoned carnival, neither facing the other but noting one another's expressions with excruciating accuracy.
"Well done, Sherlock," the first man says. His voice echoes flatly in the tiny, enormous room. "You very nearly had me fooled. Nearly. How did you do it? The pathologist, of course. Dear, sweet little Molly. She'd do anything for you."
"She would," says the second man. "It's called friendship."
"And to think I believed we were the same."
"I'm not the same as you. That actor, Brooke. He was really an actor, wasn't he? He put a gun in his mouth because you told him to."
"Yes. It's funny what people will do for you if you know enough about them. Speaking of, how is your dear little pet? Sorry, touchy subject."
"You shut up," the second man growls. "You don't get to mention John."
"Now, Sherlock, let's put the sword back in our pants. Just because you're a man doesn't mean testosterone is your only weapon." There is a pause. "Guns are much more effective." Two shots ring out as mirrors shatter, and the clock on the mantel strikes twelve.
*
Title: Medium-sized packages hold the best things of all
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, John(?)
Rating: PG
Prompt: Here on the meme.
Molly looks at him with the same sympathy he's been seeing all day, like he's about to shatter. "I haven't had a chance to clean him up yet, Sherlock, I don't think you ought to--"
"I need you to do something for me," he cuts her off, and she really shouldn't be as surprised as she is that he's not curled up weeping. Her eyebrows raise as he tells her what he needs, but when he's done her mouth sets determinedly and she nods, because - well. When has Molly Hooper ever been able to say no to Sherlock Holmes?
. .
"Sherlock, dear," Mrs. Hudson calls up the stairs -- and there it is again, that cautious catch in her voice, will I be the one to break Sherlock Holmes -- "That nice girl from the hospital just dropped off a package for you."
"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. If you could bring it up here, please." She does, of course, because everyone's still tiptoeing around him like he's clinging to sanity by his fingertips. They're all just waiting for the dam to break.
"There you are, dear," she says with a sad smile in his direction as she leaves the box on the kitchen table. (Ring of pink around the eyes, freshly washed face, handkerchief peeking out of left pocket. She's been crying.) "Can I get you anything?"
"No," he says brusquely, and she nods and retreats downstairs. He doesn't get up for eighteen seconds, waiting until her footsteps have faded on the stairs. Then he's on his feet and beside the box in a flash, slicing open the packing tape and opening the lid almost reverently. The box contains three things.
The vial of blood he takes a moment to consider, holding it up to the light. It casts a crimson shadow on his hand, dripping down his arm, staining his jacket and his shirt and his trousers and--
The vial goes to the back of the fridge, next to the tub of leftover stirfry that's sure to be gaining sentience any day now.
Next, he takes a moment to don a pair of rubber gloves and carefully unwraps the second object. He holds it and looks at it and it's of perfectly average size for a healthy human heart and all he can think is funny, I'd thought it would be bigger. For a moment he thinks about leaving it out on the counter, but a frozen heart is better than a rotted one. A frozen heart can be thawed. (He should know.)
And finally he lifts the last object from the box. It says, "About time you got me out of there."
Sherlock returns its grin, fingers dancing over black eye sockets and white bone. "Welcome home, John."
*
Fandom: Good Omens
Characters: Crowley, Aziraphale
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any, any bibliophile, running out of horizontal surfaces to stack things
After the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't (as Crowley had oh-so-eloquently christened it on one of those long, dark nights just After when they worried about the silence in the wires and drank just for the buzzing in their ears) Aziraphale launched himself deeper than ever into humanity, making tea and drinking cocoa and buying books.
Buying books especially.
Now hardly a day went by that Aziraphale didn't vanish into the ether (or not so much ether as the seething mass that was Central London, but it's very nearly the same thing) and reappear several hours later with a stack of books nearly as tall as he was.
"Just as long as you're not using my money," Crowley said, watching Aziraphale bustle around searching for free shelf space for his newest load.
"You haven't got any money," said the angel distractedly, stuffing a thick tome into the much-thinner space between a copy of the 1928 Oxford English dictionary and what looked suspiciously like a Star Wars novelization.
"Oh yes."
It wasn't long before Aziraphale had taken to stacking books on tables, and in chairs, and (to Crowley's horror) in the liquor cabinet.
"Don't you think it's about time to start selling some of these?" Crowley wondered, rescuing his bottle of rather expensive wine from a very literary death. It vanished into thin air, or more precisely his sitting room. "This is a bookstore, after all."
The look of highly offended self-righteousness (translated roughly into English as "Have I taught you nothing?") was all that was needed to send Crowley after his wine with all the urgency of a man (or, as the case may be, demon) who very much wants not to be sober, or at least not to be on the receiving end of that look.
The next time Crowley visited, he found himself wading thigh-deep through tottering stacks of books. "Are you sure they're not breeding?" he asked, picking carefully across the room. There was a large crash, reminiscent in volume to the Toppling of the Tower of Babel (one of his better jobs). "Aziraphale?"
"Mmblphhn."
The angel was quickly discovered in the back room, under a rather large pile of volumes that had collapsed and knocked the rest over like dominos. Crowley righted them with a flick of his fingers. (This was new. Often he found himself knocking things over more than putting them back.)
"Thank you, my dear," Aziraphale said primly, getting to his feet without the aid of the hand that Crowley did not offer and giving himself a good brush down. "I could have gotten out myself, of course."
"Of course." Crowley picked up the nearest book. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Really, angel?"
"I, erm--"
"Chamber of Secrets was much better. Shame about the ending, though. The poor snake."
Characters: Cas
Rating: G
Prompt: Supernatural, Any angel, For angels it's not so much being resurrected back to life as being rearranged back to consciousness.
When Castiel dies, it's not death in the way humans perceive it.He simply scatters, spread thin across the universe.
Here he sees a war-torn village; there he hears the babbling brook in a fisherman's heaven. He burns in the center of a star and feels the never-ending void of a black hole. He drifts, and pulls together, and opens his eyes.
(For if there is one thing Castiel has never been good at, it's accepting fate.)
*
Title: Bunny Rabbit
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, Sam, random beastie
Rating: PG
Prompt: Supernatural, author’s choice, Dean Winchester is not the hostage you want to take
From your vantage point, you size up the two hunters. They're dressed in suits and pull their badges out with professional airs, but they couldn't be more obvious if they were running around dark old buildings dressed in flannel with salt shells in their guns.
The big one is, well, big. He looks like he could total a Hummer with a misstep. You decide you really don't want to get in the way of those hands and turn to look over the other.
By normal standards, he's a perfectly average-sized man, but next to his partner he looks like a bunny rabbit. A bunny rabbit with a handgun and a hipflask, to be sure, but a bunny rabbit nonetheless.
You follow them, darting from rooftop to rooftop, and when the shorter one blows the other off and heads for the nearest bar you don't even have to think about which one to stick with. Your target takes a shortcut through a dark alley (honestly, how cliché; do hunters never learn?) and you take your chance, leaping down on him in the dark.
Big mistake.
You misjudge your fall, just like you misjudged your quarry, and instead of landing on his shoulders like you planned you land crouched and hissing on the ground just behind. He whirls and you leap, and you realize your mistake when the knife is driven through your gut.
As the light fades from your eyes, you belatedly remember that bunny rabbits were known by the people who once feared you as a god, and always more difficult to catch than they appeared.
*
Title: Had Weirder Days
Fandom: Doctor Who/Warehouse 13/Firefly/X Files/Battlestar Galactica (2003)/Supernatural
Characters: Canton, Valda, Badger, Bob, Lampkin, Crowley
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any show with a Mark Sheppard character/any other show(s) with a Mark Sheppard character, any, author's choice
Canton edged down the dim hallway, gun in hand. Overhead, the fluorescents flickered. On his left there was only blank wall; to the right was a door marked "MAS". He paused briefly to turn the safety off, and burst through the door.
"I demand to know where I am!" Valda yelled, banging a fist down on the table.
"Aw, siddown and get that stick outta your pigu," Badger drawled, tipping his bowler to one side.
"Here, mate, have a smoke." Bob the Caretaker produced a cigarette from his shirt pocket, offering it carelessly to the Regent. A cat streaked down the table, knocking into both. Bob went careening into Badger, who shoved him back the way he'd come. "Dammit, Lampkin, if you can't control that damn cat I'll set its tail on fire! See how fast it'll run then."
"Apologies," Lampkin said, sounding not at all apologetic as he scooped Lance back into his bag.
"Oh will all of you just shaddup!" Crowley snapped his fingers, and all jaws forcefully snapped shut. "Much better. Not that this isn't a lovely little chat, but what the hell are you all doing in my house?"
*
Title: In Rather More Than Two Dimensions
Fandom: Harry Potter/Sherlock BBC
Characters: Albus Severus, John, Sherlock
Rating: G
Notes: Inspired by this drawing of John and Sherlock as Hogwarts paintings by Fensterseifer.
There's a painting in a little-used corridor on the sixth floor. To the few students who know of it it's called just "the Couple," because no one's ever been able to get the subjects to tell them their real names.
In his head, Al has taken to calling them Scarf and Tea, though he'd never tell them that.
"Oh, it's you again, is it," Scarf sniffs when Al walks into view of the frame.
"Be nice," Tea chides. "Hello, Al."
"Hullo." Today Scarf is dressed in a white bedsheet and little else, though his famous scarf is draped over the sofa arm on the edge of the frame. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"
Tea chuckles. "No, it's all right. How was class?"
"He dropped an ink bottle, got an E in Potions, and tried to ask Rory Elkins to the dance. Failed miserably, of course." Scarf rattles off his deductions cooly, but Al can hear the underlying affection in his tone.
"Yeah, I did." Al shrugs sheepishly. "It was a longshot anyhow. Score keeps getting in the way."
"Sounds vaguely familiar." Tea smiles, shooting a sidelong glance at his fellow portrait. "You've got to find a way to ask them that sounds confident without arrogance," he advised.
"Like you've had any great success with women." Scarf rolls his eyes.
"I'll have you know I was quite chased-after in my day," Tea tells him. "'Three Continents,' they called me."
Scarf comes back with a usual witty retort. Al grins and leans back to watch the show as they snipe at each other; the bickering of epic proportions is always well worth the hike up to the sixth floor.
*
Title: House of Mirrors
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Moriarty
Rating: PG
Prompt: Here on the meme.
early in the morning and late at night
two dead boys got up to fight
back to back they faced each other
drew their swords and shot each other
It is that paradoxical time of night, at the very strike of twelve, neither yesterday nor tomorrow. Two dead men stand in the house of mirrors at an abandoned carnival, neither facing the other but noting one another's expressions with excruciating accuracy.
"Well done, Sherlock," the first man says. His voice echoes flatly in the tiny, enormous room. "You very nearly had me fooled. Nearly. How did you do it? The pathologist, of course. Dear, sweet little Molly. She'd do anything for you."
"She would," says the second man. "It's called friendship."
"And to think I believed we were the same."
"I'm not the same as you. That actor, Brooke. He was really an actor, wasn't he? He put a gun in his mouth because you told him to."
"Yes. It's funny what people will do for you if you know enough about them. Speaking of, how is your dear little pet? Sorry, touchy subject."
"You shut up," the second man growls. "You don't get to mention John."
"Now, Sherlock, let's put the sword back in our pants. Just because you're a man doesn't mean testosterone is your only weapon." There is a pause. "Guns are much more effective." Two shots ring out as mirrors shatter, and the clock on the mantel strikes twelve.
*
Title: Medium-sized packages hold the best things of all
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, John(?)
Rating: PG
Prompt: Here on the meme.
Molly looks at him with the same sympathy he's been seeing all day, like he's about to shatter. "I haven't had a chance to clean him up yet, Sherlock, I don't think you ought to--"
"I need you to do something for me," he cuts her off, and she really shouldn't be as surprised as she is that he's not curled up weeping. Her eyebrows raise as he tells her what he needs, but when he's done her mouth sets determinedly and she nods, because - well. When has Molly Hooper ever been able to say no to Sherlock Holmes?
. .
"Sherlock, dear," Mrs. Hudson calls up the stairs -- and there it is again, that cautious catch in her voice, will I be the one to break Sherlock Holmes -- "That nice girl from the hospital just dropped off a package for you."
"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. If you could bring it up here, please." She does, of course, because everyone's still tiptoeing around him like he's clinging to sanity by his fingertips. They're all just waiting for the dam to break.
"There you are, dear," she says with a sad smile in his direction as she leaves the box on the kitchen table. (Ring of pink around the eyes, freshly washed face, handkerchief peeking out of left pocket. She's been crying.) "Can I get you anything?"
"No," he says brusquely, and she nods and retreats downstairs. He doesn't get up for eighteen seconds, waiting until her footsteps have faded on the stairs. Then he's on his feet and beside the box in a flash, slicing open the packing tape and opening the lid almost reverently. The box contains three things.
The vial of blood he takes a moment to consider, holding it up to the light. It casts a crimson shadow on his hand, dripping down his arm, staining his jacket and his shirt and his trousers and--
The vial goes to the back of the fridge, next to the tub of leftover stirfry that's sure to be gaining sentience any day now.
Next, he takes a moment to don a pair of rubber gloves and carefully unwraps the second object. He holds it and looks at it and it's of perfectly average size for a healthy human heart and all he can think is funny, I'd thought it would be bigger. For a moment he thinks about leaving it out on the counter, but a frozen heart is better than a rotted one. A frozen heart can be thawed. (He should know.)
And finally he lifts the last object from the box. It says, "About time you got me out of there."
Sherlock returns its grin, fingers dancing over black eye sockets and white bone. "Welcome home, John."
*
Fandom: Good Omens
Characters: Crowley, Aziraphale
Rating: PG
Prompt: Any, any bibliophile, running out of horizontal surfaces to stack things
After the Apocalypse-That-Wasn't (as Crowley had oh-so-eloquently christened it on one of those long, dark nights just After when they worried about the silence in the wires and drank just for the buzzing in their ears) Aziraphale launched himself deeper than ever into humanity, making tea and drinking cocoa and buying books.
Buying books especially.
Now hardly a day went by that Aziraphale didn't vanish into the ether (or not so much ether as the seething mass that was Central London, but it's very nearly the same thing) and reappear several hours later with a stack of books nearly as tall as he was.
"Just as long as you're not using my money," Crowley said, watching Aziraphale bustle around searching for free shelf space for his newest load.
"You haven't got any money," said the angel distractedly, stuffing a thick tome into the much-thinner space between a copy of the 1928 Oxford English dictionary and what looked suspiciously like a Star Wars novelization.
"Oh yes."
It wasn't long before Aziraphale had taken to stacking books on tables, and in chairs, and (to Crowley's horror) in the liquor cabinet.
"Don't you think it's about time to start selling some of these?" Crowley wondered, rescuing his bottle of rather expensive wine from a very literary death. It vanished into thin air, or more precisely his sitting room. "This is a bookstore, after all."
The look of highly offended self-righteousness (translated roughly into English as "Have I taught you nothing?") was all that was needed to send Crowley after his wine with all the urgency of a man (or, as the case may be, demon) who very much wants not to be sober, or at least not to be on the receiving end of that look.
The next time Crowley visited, he found himself wading thigh-deep through tottering stacks of books. "Are you sure they're not breeding?" he asked, picking carefully across the room. There was a large crash, reminiscent in volume to the Toppling of the Tower of Babel (one of his better jobs). "Aziraphale?"
"Mmblphhn."
The angel was quickly discovered in the back room, under a rather large pile of volumes that had collapsed and knocked the rest over like dominos. Crowley righted them with a flick of his fingers. (This was new. Often he found himself knocking things over more than putting them back.)
"Thank you, my dear," Aziraphale said primly, getting to his feet without the aid of the hand that Crowley did not offer and giving himself a good brush down. "I could have gotten out myself, of course."
"Of course." Crowley picked up the nearest book. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Really, angel?"
"I, erm--"
"Chamber of Secrets was much better. Shame about the ending, though. The poor snake."