Memers gonna meme
So a friend of mine elliotsmelliot, did this meme ages ago and I loved it and figured I’d have a crack at it. Like, two years later, I’m finally posting it up.
Make a list of all the characters in your icons. If you have more than one icon of a single character, they only go on the list once. Alphabetize the list. Take the first two people on the list; that's your first pairing. Second two people; second pairing, etc. Graphic! Or fanfic, whatever you like. Go nuts!
Billie Piper/David Tennant
He is slender and slightly crooked, his nose hooked and his chin weak. Her jaw is strong in comparison, her body compact and sturdy. Where his lips are thin, hers are plump and full. Her nose turns up to counter the hook of his. They fit together like the most exquisite puzzle. They make each other laugh in a way that nobody else can. They...well they just complete each other really.
“Hullo,” he gazes at her, bright eyed and bushy tailed and gloriously, stupendously naked.
She offers him a slow, lazy blink, and then her tongue reaches out to touch the corner of her mouth and she’s straddling him, breathlessly covering his body with her own and chuckling.
“Hello yourself.”
~*~
Dean Winchester/Eleventh Doctor
After a run in with some Weeping Angels on a hunt, Dean winds up in the 1940’s. With no job, no ID and no credentials, Dean does the only sensible thing he can figure - he gets fake documents and joins the army. He winds up getting shipped out to England during the Blitz. He writes letters to Sam, always knowing that by the time he gets to a point where he can meet up with his brother he’ll be an old man, or that he might not even live through the war. And then he meets the Doctor. Understandably, they drive each other a little bit nuts. But there’s something about the other that is just too familiar, that undeniable sense of brokenness that brings them together. The TARDIS may or may not deliberately take longer than she needs to get Dean back home...
“Where the hell are we? This isn’t the States. This isn’t even Earth! Goddamnit...”
Dean slumps against the TARDIS doors and his head makes a satisfying thud as he lets it fall back against the pseudo-wood. Months it’s been now. Years maybe. Sam probably thinks he’s dead. Hell, maybe he is dead. Again. Dean feels the Doctor’s weight join him, leaning against the other door.
“You’re upset.” He observes lightly and Dean huffs irritably.
“Oh you think?”
“You Americans,” the Doctor chides gently. “With all your guns and your...sarcasm! Doesn’t it ever get tedious?”
“You’re...tedious.” Dean mutters, lamely and is startled out of his funk by a peal of delighted laughter. He looks over at the man - the alien - next to him and tries for a belligerent glare. “What’s so goddamned funny?”
The Doctor’s eyes just sparkle, like some infuriatingly benign god (and honestly Dean is still halfway convinced this guys a trickster, not an alien at all) and then reaches out to pat him on the shoulder.
“Come along Winchester. Think of it as an intergalactic road trip! You’ve got to make a few pit stops along the way to where you’re going...”
~*~
Harry Potter/Hermione Granger
Hermione has always been there for him, and she always had his back. And even though he knows that she doesn’t expect repayment it’s nice to be able to return the favour from time to time.
One year the whole Weasley-Potter-Lupin clan take a trip up to Scotland for Christmas. The Burrow is overrun with Nargles and is uninhabitable and nowhere else is large enough to house the entire family. Arthur, bless him, convinces everyone to go on a hike one afternoon. Hermione, laid up with a stubborn cold, stays behind and Harry offers to stay in case she needs anything. Ron, glad of the reprieve from his wife’s frustration and increasingly wild hair, is all too glad to help Ginny wrangle the children outside for the walk.
They take advantage of the quiet and lack of magic to play some old CD’s in the even older CD player. Between bouts of Pepper Up Potion, Harry reads to her, dog eared Muggle books left behind by previous visitors to the cabin. It’s comfortable and warm, a world away from past discomforts, and when she asks for a dance he doesn’t think it’s a great idea to begin with but the music is soft and it’s beginning to snow and why not?
She leans her face into his jumper as they sway, and afterwards she falls asleep on his shoulder. He likes it when Hermione gets like this, all soft and contented. It happens so rarely, those quiet moment where she gives into exhaustion and allows herself to be vulnerable. He resists the urge to touch her cheek, to press his palm to her skin.
If things had been different, he thinks maybe they could have had something. Once upon a time. But they’re well beyond that now. Their family comes crashing back into the cabin, a mess of tumbling children and rosy cheeked adults. Hermione stirs and smiles indulgently as Rose and Hugo scramble onto her lap, pressing their cold noses against her cheeks. Harry watches fondly and puts the could-have and should-have-been’s at the back of his mind.
They’re happy enough. All of them. In this mad old life they’ve had so far, and the rest they have yet to live.
~*~
John Watson/Ninth Doctor
Nothing ever happens to John Watson. That is until the clinic he works at gets blown up by a madman in a leather jacket. Next thing he knows, there are plastic arms trying to strangle him and said madman is stalking him across London, getting him involved in alien conspiracies and god knows what else…
He recognises a fellow soldier when he sees one. And this ‘Doctor’ bloke, this alien, he’s been in the wars. Oh not like Afghanistan, not really. He’s probably been in every intergalactic gunfight this side of the Milky Way - laser guns and all. But there’s a crease across his brow and steel behind his eyes, a horrible lonely brokenness that seems to spill from him unbidden when he’s least expecting it to.
John looks at the Doctor and sees himself looking back.
“You could stay here,” the offer is genial. Behind him stands his magic box, his time-and-spaceship which is warm and bright and beckoning. “Fill your life with work and food and sleep or you could go...anywhere.”
John hesitates, considering. “Is it always this dangerous?”
The Doctor cracks a smile at that - beams really - and they share a quiet chuckle between them. They both know the answer.
When the TARDIS dematerialises John Watson leaves behind no trace but his abandoned cane.
~*~
Rose Tyler/Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes never met Rose Marion Tyler - but she proves to be one of the most tantalising cases that he never solved. Pretty girl disappears, but not murdered - oh no. The boyfriend is innocent of that. But he knows something. No enemies, no clues and no leads, just some grainy CCTV footage of her seen in the company of a mysterious older man wearing a leather jacket.
Her name turns up, years later, on the list of the dead from Canary Wharf and Sherlock goes into a frenzy. When did she reappear? Where had she been? What of the man in the leather jacket? The answers prove to be so fragmented, so inconclusive that he can’t make sense of any of it. He stores her away with all of the improbable historical events and various impossibilities that are attributed to her file.
And then one day he remembers a conversation he’d had with her idiot boyfriend.
“Aliens,” he blurts out one day. John glances up, mildly inquisitive.
“Sorry, what?”
“Once you have eliminated the impossible,” Sherlock mutters.
John blinks, shrugs and goes back to his newspaper.
There are more things, Sherlock thinks, and marvels.
~*~
Tenth Doctor/Sam Winchester
Sam notices the absurd pinstriped suit first - completely out of place amongst the flannel and denim at a gas station just outside of Liberty. But it’s the sad familiarity in the dark eyes which really grabs his attention.
The man presses thin hands into pinstriped pockets and gives him a brief nod as he goes to leave - his pockets empty of gas receipts or chocolate bars. Sam pays hurriedly and chases after him, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Hey. Do I know you?”
Pinstripes blusters and bluffs like he hadn’t been staring at him. “Oh no! Just passing through…thought I recognised you…obviously wrong.”
The accent doesn’t fit either and Sam feels even more uneasy. But the guy doesn’t seem threatening so he heads back to the car, trying to shrug it off. The passenger side window is down and he piles a handful of chocolate bars through the gap. Dean grunts as he comes out of a gentle doze, pawing blindly at his chest.
“Pie?” he mumbles hopefully. A protein bar slides off his shirt and onto the seat beside him.
“Nope. No pie.” Sam swings around to the driver’s side and is about to gun the ignition when he sees him. Pinstripes. Their eyes meet and a chill crawls unbidden down his spine. Sam Winchester has faced down demons and monsters of all kinds but there’s something about the way this guy looks at him…
“Sammy?”
In the split second it takes to glance at Dean, Pinstripes is gone.
It’s a one in a million chance that they meet again but Sam is only a little surprised to run into the guy again. It’s a few years down the track and Pinstripes is engrossed in an ice cream sundae at a crappy diner. The only available chair is at his table so Sam squares his shoulders and gingerly invades the space. This time he is the one who is staring, recognising all too easily the melancholy slant to Pinstripes thin shoulders and the pain lingering in his eyes.
“My name’s Sam Winchester. I met you at a gas station in Kansas?” Sam tries to jog the guys memory as he picks his way through a wilting salad. “Maybe four, five years ago now?”
Pinstripes shakes his head, mouth turning down comically. “Not ringing any bells. Though,” he concedes thoughtfully. “I might not have been there yet.”
It doesn’t take long for Sam to figure out there’s more to this guy than meets the eye. The question, “Are you an angel?” is greeted with an almost manic grin and Sam has to crack a wry smile too at the ridiculousness. To be fair, he mainly asked because Pinstripes has a long tan overcoat which reminds him... The thought of Cas hits him hard, and Pinstripes must notice something in his face because the smile quickly slides off his own.
“I didn’t mean to end up here,” he admits. “I dunno. Maybe I was supposed to bump into you.”
Sam considers a crouton, then blurts. “I lost my brother.”
Pinstripes nods, and his eyes slide away and down to the half melted remnants of his sundae.
“Twice since the last time I saw you actually,” Sam clarifies. Pauses. “Did…did you lose someone too?”
Pinstripes sniffs abruptly and leans back in the chair, thin arms winding across his chest. “Parallel universe.”
He seems to be expecting Sam to scoff. Instead he gets an understanding nod.
“Purgatory.”
Pinstripes eyes widen at this. Sam thinks he might even be impressed. “The void?”
“I guess.”
“The howling.” Pinstripes adds, eyes glazing and Sam feels his skin start crawling anew. “Good luck getting him back from there.”
Abruptly he pushes out of his chair and just like that, goes to leave. Despite the fresh wave of grief that is threatening to engulf him, Sam reaches out and catches a skinny elbow with a soft, “Hey.”
Pinstripes glances back at him, waiting.
“For what it’s worth,” Sam manages. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
Pinstripes manages a pained smile and squeezes a hand briefly over Sam’s. A gesture of solidarity between two people bound only by their own separate grief.
“I’m sorry about your brother.” His dark eyes flicker with sadness. “I’m so sorry.”
Who are you? Hangs in the air between them. What are you?
Pinstripes leaves nothing behind but an empty sundae bowl. Sam never sees him again.
Make a list of all the characters in your icons. If you have more than one icon of a single character, they only go on the list once. Alphabetize the list. Take the first two people on the list; that's your first pairing. Second two people; second pairing, etc. Graphic! Or fanfic, whatever you like. Go nuts!
Billie Piper/David Tennant
He is slender and slightly crooked, his nose hooked and his chin weak. Her jaw is strong in comparison, her body compact and sturdy. Where his lips are thin, hers are plump and full. Her nose turns up to counter the hook of his. They fit together like the most exquisite puzzle. They make each other laugh in a way that nobody else can. They...well they just complete each other really.
“Hullo,” he gazes at her, bright eyed and bushy tailed and gloriously, stupendously naked.
She offers him a slow, lazy blink, and then her tongue reaches out to touch the corner of her mouth and she’s straddling him, breathlessly covering his body with her own and chuckling.
“Hello yourself.”
~*~
Dean Winchester/Eleventh Doctor
After a run in with some Weeping Angels on a hunt, Dean winds up in the 1940’s. With no job, no ID and no credentials, Dean does the only sensible thing he can figure - he gets fake documents and joins the army. He winds up getting shipped out to England during the Blitz. He writes letters to Sam, always knowing that by the time he gets to a point where he can meet up with his brother he’ll be an old man, or that he might not even live through the war. And then he meets the Doctor. Understandably, they drive each other a little bit nuts. But there’s something about the other that is just too familiar, that undeniable sense of brokenness that brings them together. The TARDIS may or may not deliberately take longer than she needs to get Dean back home...
“Where the hell are we? This isn’t the States. This isn’t even Earth! Goddamnit...”
Dean slumps against the TARDIS doors and his head makes a satisfying thud as he lets it fall back against the pseudo-wood. Months it’s been now. Years maybe. Sam probably thinks he’s dead. Hell, maybe he is dead. Again. Dean feels the Doctor’s weight join him, leaning against the other door.
“You’re upset.” He observes lightly and Dean huffs irritably.
“Oh you think?”
“You Americans,” the Doctor chides gently. “With all your guns and your...sarcasm! Doesn’t it ever get tedious?”
“You’re...tedious.” Dean mutters, lamely and is startled out of his funk by a peal of delighted laughter. He looks over at the man - the alien - next to him and tries for a belligerent glare. “What’s so goddamned funny?”
The Doctor’s eyes just sparkle, like some infuriatingly benign god (and honestly Dean is still halfway convinced this guys a trickster, not an alien at all) and then reaches out to pat him on the shoulder.
“Come along Winchester. Think of it as an intergalactic road trip! You’ve got to make a few pit stops along the way to where you’re going...”
~*~
Harry Potter/Hermione Granger
Hermione has always been there for him, and she always had his back. And even though he knows that she doesn’t expect repayment it’s nice to be able to return the favour from time to time.
One year the whole Weasley-Potter-Lupin clan take a trip up to Scotland for Christmas. The Burrow is overrun with Nargles and is uninhabitable and nowhere else is large enough to house the entire family. Arthur, bless him, convinces everyone to go on a hike one afternoon. Hermione, laid up with a stubborn cold, stays behind and Harry offers to stay in case she needs anything. Ron, glad of the reprieve from his wife’s frustration and increasingly wild hair, is all too glad to help Ginny wrangle the children outside for the walk.
They take advantage of the quiet and lack of magic to play some old CD’s in the even older CD player. Between bouts of Pepper Up Potion, Harry reads to her, dog eared Muggle books left behind by previous visitors to the cabin. It’s comfortable and warm, a world away from past discomforts, and when she asks for a dance he doesn’t think it’s a great idea to begin with but the music is soft and it’s beginning to snow and why not?
She leans her face into his jumper as they sway, and afterwards she falls asleep on his shoulder. He likes it when Hermione gets like this, all soft and contented. It happens so rarely, those quiet moment where she gives into exhaustion and allows herself to be vulnerable. He resists the urge to touch her cheek, to press his palm to her skin.
If things had been different, he thinks maybe they could have had something. Once upon a time. But they’re well beyond that now. Their family comes crashing back into the cabin, a mess of tumbling children and rosy cheeked adults. Hermione stirs and smiles indulgently as Rose and Hugo scramble onto her lap, pressing their cold noses against her cheeks. Harry watches fondly and puts the could-have and should-have-been’s at the back of his mind.
They’re happy enough. All of them. In this mad old life they’ve had so far, and the rest they have yet to live.
~*~
John Watson/Ninth Doctor
Nothing ever happens to John Watson. That is until the clinic he works at gets blown up by a madman in a leather jacket. Next thing he knows, there are plastic arms trying to strangle him and said madman is stalking him across London, getting him involved in alien conspiracies and god knows what else…
He recognises a fellow soldier when he sees one. And this ‘Doctor’ bloke, this alien, he’s been in the wars. Oh not like Afghanistan, not really. He’s probably been in every intergalactic gunfight this side of the Milky Way - laser guns and all. But there’s a crease across his brow and steel behind his eyes, a horrible lonely brokenness that seems to spill from him unbidden when he’s least expecting it to.
John looks at the Doctor and sees himself looking back.
“You could stay here,” the offer is genial. Behind him stands his magic box, his time-and-spaceship which is warm and bright and beckoning. “Fill your life with work and food and sleep or you could go...anywhere.”
John hesitates, considering. “Is it always this dangerous?”
The Doctor cracks a smile at that - beams really - and they share a quiet chuckle between them. They both know the answer.
When the TARDIS dematerialises John Watson leaves behind no trace but his abandoned cane.
~*~
Rose Tyler/Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes never met Rose Marion Tyler - but she proves to be one of the most tantalising cases that he never solved. Pretty girl disappears, but not murdered - oh no. The boyfriend is innocent of that. But he knows something. No enemies, no clues and no leads, just some grainy CCTV footage of her seen in the company of a mysterious older man wearing a leather jacket.
Her name turns up, years later, on the list of the dead from Canary Wharf and Sherlock goes into a frenzy. When did she reappear? Where had she been? What of the man in the leather jacket? The answers prove to be so fragmented, so inconclusive that he can’t make sense of any of it. He stores her away with all of the improbable historical events and various impossibilities that are attributed to her file.
And then one day he remembers a conversation he’d had with her idiot boyfriend.
“Aliens,” he blurts out one day. John glances up, mildly inquisitive.
“Sorry, what?”
“Once you have eliminated the impossible,” Sherlock mutters.
John blinks, shrugs and goes back to his newspaper.
There are more things, Sherlock thinks, and marvels.
~*~
Tenth Doctor/Sam Winchester
Sam notices the absurd pinstriped suit first - completely out of place amongst the flannel and denim at a gas station just outside of Liberty. But it’s the sad familiarity in the dark eyes which really grabs his attention.
The man presses thin hands into pinstriped pockets and gives him a brief nod as he goes to leave - his pockets empty of gas receipts or chocolate bars. Sam pays hurriedly and chases after him, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Hey. Do I know you?”
Pinstripes blusters and bluffs like he hadn’t been staring at him. “Oh no! Just passing through…thought I recognised you…obviously wrong.”
The accent doesn’t fit either and Sam feels even more uneasy. But the guy doesn’t seem threatening so he heads back to the car, trying to shrug it off. The passenger side window is down and he piles a handful of chocolate bars through the gap. Dean grunts as he comes out of a gentle doze, pawing blindly at his chest.
“Pie?” he mumbles hopefully. A protein bar slides off his shirt and onto the seat beside him.
“Nope. No pie.” Sam swings around to the driver’s side and is about to gun the ignition when he sees him. Pinstripes. Their eyes meet and a chill crawls unbidden down his spine. Sam Winchester has faced down demons and monsters of all kinds but there’s something about the way this guy looks at him…
“Sammy?”
In the split second it takes to glance at Dean, Pinstripes is gone.
It’s a one in a million chance that they meet again but Sam is only a little surprised to run into the guy again. It’s a few years down the track and Pinstripes is engrossed in an ice cream sundae at a crappy diner. The only available chair is at his table so Sam squares his shoulders and gingerly invades the space. This time he is the one who is staring, recognising all too easily the melancholy slant to Pinstripes thin shoulders and the pain lingering in his eyes.
“My name’s Sam Winchester. I met you at a gas station in Kansas?” Sam tries to jog the guys memory as he picks his way through a wilting salad. “Maybe four, five years ago now?”
Pinstripes shakes his head, mouth turning down comically. “Not ringing any bells. Though,” he concedes thoughtfully. “I might not have been there yet.”
It doesn’t take long for Sam to figure out there’s more to this guy than meets the eye. The question, “Are you an angel?” is greeted with an almost manic grin and Sam has to crack a wry smile too at the ridiculousness. To be fair, he mainly asked because Pinstripes has a long tan overcoat which reminds him... The thought of Cas hits him hard, and Pinstripes must notice something in his face because the smile quickly slides off his own.
“I didn’t mean to end up here,” he admits. “I dunno. Maybe I was supposed to bump into you.”
Sam considers a crouton, then blurts. “I lost my brother.”
Pinstripes nods, and his eyes slide away and down to the half melted remnants of his sundae.
“Twice since the last time I saw you actually,” Sam clarifies. Pauses. “Did…did you lose someone too?”
Pinstripes sniffs abruptly and leans back in the chair, thin arms winding across his chest. “Parallel universe.”
He seems to be expecting Sam to scoff. Instead he gets an understanding nod.
“Purgatory.”
Pinstripes eyes widen at this. Sam thinks he might even be impressed. “The void?”
“I guess.”
“The howling.” Pinstripes adds, eyes glazing and Sam feels his skin start crawling anew. “Good luck getting him back from there.”
Abruptly he pushes out of his chair and just like that, goes to leave. Despite the fresh wave of grief that is threatening to engulf him, Sam reaches out and catches a skinny elbow with a soft, “Hey.”
Pinstripes glances back at him, waiting.
“For what it’s worth,” Sam manages. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
Pinstripes manages a pained smile and squeezes a hand briefly over Sam’s. A gesture of solidarity between two people bound only by their own separate grief.
“I’m sorry about your brother.” His dark eyes flicker with sadness. “I’m so sorry.”
Who are you? Hangs in the air between them. What are you?
Pinstripes leaves nothing behind but an empty sundae bowl. Sam never sees him again.