Fic progress
The Best Things in Life Are Free keeps waving its little ficcish fist at 50,000 words but refuses to cross the Rubicon. Every time it gets close, I edit some part out or rewrite something and it slides back underneath.
Part five was over 12,000 words before I moved one scene to part six and I'm fairly certain that it's STILL not going to fit in one LJ window. I'm still on the fence as to whether 5a and 5b should be posted concurrently or with a gap between them. (The gap means 5a is out sooner but I'm still worried that 5b will also exceed LJ limits.) The real problem is that one of the remaining scenes needs a lot of action-oriented detail, and two others are emotionally important and considering the characters, failing miserably. So.
In other news, I wrote a few comment fics in the last couple weeks. They're not beta'd, but I did read over them before I posted. There are several in the queue but now there are:
libitina asked for
What to Wear When Courting
John nodded to Rodney as they passed in the hall, then had a belated realization and spun on one heel. "Rodney?"
"Huh, yes, Colonel, you have an, um, emergency? Something you need me to reverse engineer right now?"
John frowned at Rodney's stutter. "I was just going to ask if you were wearing that to go on a date. Again," he added, with audible dread.
"Well, I -- " Rodney glanced down at his khakis and blue sport coat. "Yes. What's wrong with it?"
"Oh, uh, nothing." John told himself to turn and walk away but he just couldn't do it. "It's, um. Didn't you wear that last time?"
"Er, yes." Rodney's eyes glanced down the length of his outfit and then up at John. "No?"
"Come with me." John grabbed Rodney's arm, solid under the stiff fabric and lining of the coat and dragged him into the quarters one of the scientists had vacated when he left on the Daedalus. "Take this off," he said, steering Rodney in front of the mirror and tugging on the sleeve of the jacket. Rodney complied, eyebrows knitting together curiously. He folded it and laid it on the counter then waited for John.
John unbuttoned another button of his shirt and tugged the collar into a more rakish position. He tugged Rodney's undershirt down with one finger, just enough to show off a tuft of chest hair. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled the sleeves high enough to show the muscles of Rodney's forearms. He gave Rodney a critical look up and down and decided there was nothing to be done about the khakis. If he'd had time, he'd have Rodney change into jeans or maybe just rumple up the pants a little.
"There," he said, a little breathless. "Now you can go."
"Are you sure?" Rodney asked, plucking at the collar and casting a sidelong glance into the mirror.
"You look hot," John assured him.
"I do?" Rodney asked, and then, his eyes wider and his face drawn serious, "I do?"
John opened his mouth to say something flip and nothing came out. Instead, he reached out, his eyes flitting over to his hand as if watching himself in a movie, and batted Rodney's hand away from the collar. Then he took the collar in hand himself, reached out to grab the other side with his free hand, and dragged Rodney in slowly.
"Yeah," he said, so quietly he almost couldn't make out his own words. "You look hot."
He pulled Rodney up to him, tilted his head, and let his mouth fall over Rodney's, soft and hot and, with one pass of his tongue, wet. He kissed Rodney one more time, nice and slow, and then murmured, "You had a date tonight?"
"No," Rodney said, reaching around John's arms to bury his hands in John's hair and drag his head down again. "I'm right where I need to be."
chopchica asked for
John is falling, Rodney catches him.
Rodney had made a few bad decisions in his day. Kissing April Bingham was one of the big ones. The forty-eight hour calculation had not really worked to his advantage. Directing an EM pulse through the stargate hadn't won him much in the way of brownie points, either. There were days when stepping through the wormhole at all seemed to demonstrate a severe lack of judgement. And that thing where he blew up 5/6ths of a solar system hadn't gone over well, either.
But jumping out of a puddlejumper after an unconscious Colonel Sheppard was way up there with the stupider things he'd done.
"Go faster, go faster," he muttered to himself, trying to kick his legs straight and angle himself toward the falling man below him. "Damn air resistance!" He tried to 'swim' his way over to Sheppard and found it impossible to move his arms. "Would you slow down already?" he screamed, just as he realized that Sheppard, limp and unconscious, would fall at a much slower rate than Rodney himself. Rodney finally managed to bring his arms in tight and squeeze his legs together and fifteen long seconds later, he crashed squarely into the Colonel. He wrapped his left arm and both legs around Sheppard's body, clawed for the ripcord, found it, and pulled as hard as he could. The sudden stop nearly ripped them apart but Rodney flung his right arm around Sheppard's shoulders and clung for dear life as they drifted toward the ground.
"I think you'd better wake up," he called to Sheppard over the rush of air in his ears as the bank of the Athosian settlement came up under them entirely too fast. "I don't know how to land this thing." He glanced down at the gathering crowd and jostled Sheppard in his arms.
Sheppard's eyes blinked open and he groaned. "Rodney?" he asked, squinting.
Rodney smiled, a happy, giddy grin of we're not going to die before dinner! "Hey."
And then they hit.
miss_porcupine requested
A story where Kyle is the GL for the sector where Atlantis is.
"And so you are charged with protection of the entire...sector," Elizabeth clarified.
"I am," Green Lantern said. "You can call me Kyle. I figure since we're all from Earth, originally, and I'm going to screw up my secret identity sooner rather than later, I might as well be upfront about it."
"So, wait, let me get this right," Rodney interrupted. "You, or someone like you, is in charge of protecting this 'sector' and there's a 'Green Lantern' for every sector of the galaxy?"
"Pretty much," Kyle agreed with a nod.
"Right, so what's the deal with the Wraith, then?" John asked, leaning forward and scrunching up his forehead. "The guy with the job before you must have been a complete slacker."
Kyle looked faintly uncomfortable. "Well, see, the Guardians draw Lanterns from all over. They like to have a native around, so the Green Lantern for this sector, well, he was one of the Wraith."
"Huh," John said.
"That explains a lot," Elizabeth murmured under her breath.
"What kind of morons do you work for?" Rodney demanded. "They hired a Wraith to protect these people? Didn't they figure out that was like sending the fox to guard the henhouse?"
"Yeah, well, they've seen the error of their ways and sent me," Kyle said defensively.
"I want to know what kind of weapons you're using to fend off an entire galaxy - sector - of predators and war and strife and all that other stuff," John said, crossing his arms and rocking back on his heels.
"Pretty much just the ring," Kyle said, holding up his hand apologetically.
"Let me take a look at that," John said, holding out his own hand, palm up.
"Yeah, right," Kyle said. "Even the ring can't do anything with your hair. Besides, it's coded to work only for me."
"Convenient," John muttered, ignoring the remark about his hair.
"So, wait," Rodney said, suddenly interested. "How did they do that? Biorhythms? Electromagnetic field of the brain? DNA matching? What happens if you die? Will the ring affix itself to a new person?" Rodney advanced a step with every new idea, until Kyle was clutching his hand against his chest.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "You'd have to ask the Guardians."
"Huh," Rodney said, not giving any quarter. "What's it use as a power source?"
"Um. There's this lantern...."
"What Dr. McKay really would like to know," Elizabeth interrupted, "is whether you can recharge our ZPM."
"That glowy thing?" Kyle asked. "No problem. I think."
"More importantly," John asked him, sotto voce as Rodney hauled Kyle bodily toward their power supply, "if the ring can get your hair to stand up like that...how do I get one?"
I'm ashamed it's not crackier.
control_freak80 asked for
Weir/Sumner. Weir is the school teacher and Sumner is the sheriff. Set in the old west.
"Ma'am."
"Sheriff." Elizabeth Weir paused to curtsy at Marshall Sumner, but the glint in her eyes indicated that she sensed an opportunity and when Miz Weir saw an opportunity.
"And what is it that I can do for you, today, ma'am?" Sumner asked, smiling as nicely as he could. Elizabeth Weir might be short-tempered, outspoken, and too damn smart for her own good, but Sumner kind of liked that in a woman. Nice eyes, too, green if he wasn't mistaken. And Marshall Sumner wasn't hardly ever mistaken.
"Aiden Ford," Elizabeth said.
"Good kid," Sumner said agreeably. "Helped wrestle in one of those horse theives the other week. Got his arm bunged up for it, too."
"He did," Elizabeth - he always called her Elizabeth in his head just because it wasn't proper. "It's already a shame he can't attend the fall and spring sessions because of the harvest and the planting, and now he's all laid up and out this winter, too. He has a lot of potential and I'd like to see him complete his education."
"I've got him doing me some chores around the jail," Sumner assured her. "He's a mite old to need more schooling, and he ain't doing no writing with that arm of his. I've got Sheppard teaching him the ropes. He'll make a right good deputy in no time."
"Well. Deputy Sheppard has best not teach him that nasty habit of slouching," Elizabeth said determinedly and Sumner felt his spine creak up another notch as he tried to straighten in his boots.
Blasted woman, he thought, slouching back down again. Trying to paste those Eastern manners on men of the West.
"I'll speak to him about that, ma'am," Sumner said, having no intention to do anything of the kind.
"Thank you, Sheriff," Elizabeth said and smiled at her. Her cheeks pinked up and her eyes twinkled, and before he could help himself, Sumner found himself speaking.
"Do you like horses, Miz Weir?"
Her cheeks pinked even more and she cast her eyes down. "I rode them quite a bit as a chid," she admitted.
Sumner grinned. "I'm breaking a new pair this weekend," he said. "Teach 'em to pull a sleigh. Don't suppose you'd like to help a man out?"
"Why -- I believe I would like that very much," Eliza - Miz Weir said, glancing up at him under his lashes. "Do you like pie, Sheriff?"
"Never met a man yet who doesn't," Sumner told her.
"Perhaps afterward, you could stay for a slice? I bake my pies on Saturday mornings."
Sumner felt himself straighten and didn't bother to slouch again. "Miz Weir," he said. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
Also, control_freak80 has kindly loaned me her SG-1, Season 1 DVDs and I have been watching them through bouts of insomnia. There may be detailed reviews later.
Part five was over 12,000 words before I moved one scene to part six and I'm fairly certain that it's STILL not going to fit in one LJ window. I'm still on the fence as to whether 5a and 5b should be posted concurrently or with a gap between them. (The gap means 5a is out sooner but I'm still worried that 5b will also exceed LJ limits.) The real problem is that one of the remaining scenes needs a lot of action-oriented detail, and two others are emotionally important and considering the characters, failing miserably. So.
In other news, I wrote a few comment fics in the last couple weeks. They're not beta'd, but I did read over them before I posted. There are several in the queue but now there are:
libitina asked for
What to Wear When Courting
John nodded to Rodney as they passed in the hall, then had a belated realization and spun on one heel. "Rodney?"
"Huh, yes, Colonel, you have an, um, emergency? Something you need me to reverse engineer right now?"
John frowned at Rodney's stutter. "I was just going to ask if you were wearing that to go on a date. Again," he added, with audible dread.
"Well, I -- " Rodney glanced down at his khakis and blue sport coat. "Yes. What's wrong with it?"
"Oh, uh, nothing." John told himself to turn and walk away but he just couldn't do it. "It's, um. Didn't you wear that last time?"
"Er, yes." Rodney's eyes glanced down the length of his outfit and then up at John. "No?"
"Come with me." John grabbed Rodney's arm, solid under the stiff fabric and lining of the coat and dragged him into the quarters one of the scientists had vacated when he left on the Daedalus. "Take this off," he said, steering Rodney in front of the mirror and tugging on the sleeve of the jacket. Rodney complied, eyebrows knitting together curiously. He folded it and laid it on the counter then waited for John.
John unbuttoned another button of his shirt and tugged the collar into a more rakish position. He tugged Rodney's undershirt down with one finger, just enough to show off a tuft of chest hair. Then he unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled the sleeves high enough to show the muscles of Rodney's forearms. He gave Rodney a critical look up and down and decided there was nothing to be done about the khakis. If he'd had time, he'd have Rodney change into jeans or maybe just rumple up the pants a little.
"There," he said, a little breathless. "Now you can go."
"Are you sure?" Rodney asked, plucking at the collar and casting a sidelong glance into the mirror.
"You look hot," John assured him.
"I do?" Rodney asked, and then, his eyes wider and his face drawn serious, "I do?"
John opened his mouth to say something flip and nothing came out. Instead, he reached out, his eyes flitting over to his hand as if watching himself in a movie, and batted Rodney's hand away from the collar. Then he took the collar in hand himself, reached out to grab the other side with his free hand, and dragged Rodney in slowly.
"Yeah," he said, so quietly he almost couldn't make out his own words. "You look hot."
He pulled Rodney up to him, tilted his head, and let his mouth fall over Rodney's, soft and hot and, with one pass of his tongue, wet. He kissed Rodney one more time, nice and slow, and then murmured, "You had a date tonight?"
"No," Rodney said, reaching around John's arms to bury his hands in John's hair and drag his head down again. "I'm right where I need to be."
chopchica asked for
John is falling, Rodney catches him.
Rodney had made a few bad decisions in his day. Kissing April Bingham was one of the big ones. The forty-eight hour calculation had not really worked to his advantage. Directing an EM pulse through the stargate hadn't won him much in the way of brownie points, either. There were days when stepping through the wormhole at all seemed to demonstrate a severe lack of judgement. And that thing where he blew up 5/6ths of a solar system hadn't gone over well, either.
But jumping out of a puddlejumper after an unconscious Colonel Sheppard was way up there with the stupider things he'd done.
"Go faster, go faster," he muttered to himself, trying to kick his legs straight and angle himself toward the falling man below him. "Damn air resistance!" He tried to 'swim' his way over to Sheppard and found it impossible to move his arms. "Would you slow down already?" he screamed, just as he realized that Sheppard, limp and unconscious, would fall at a much slower rate than Rodney himself. Rodney finally managed to bring his arms in tight and squeeze his legs together and fifteen long seconds later, he crashed squarely into the Colonel. He wrapped his left arm and both legs around Sheppard's body, clawed for the ripcord, found it, and pulled as hard as he could. The sudden stop nearly ripped them apart but Rodney flung his right arm around Sheppard's shoulders and clung for dear life as they drifted toward the ground.
"I think you'd better wake up," he called to Sheppard over the rush of air in his ears as the bank of the Athosian settlement came up under them entirely too fast. "I don't know how to land this thing." He glanced down at the gathering crowd and jostled Sheppard in his arms.
Sheppard's eyes blinked open and he groaned. "Rodney?" he asked, squinting.
Rodney smiled, a happy, giddy grin of we're not going to die before dinner! "Hey."
And then they hit.
miss_porcupine requested
A story where Kyle is the GL for the sector where Atlantis is.
"And so you are charged with protection of the entire...sector," Elizabeth clarified.
"I am," Green Lantern said. "You can call me Kyle. I figure since we're all from Earth, originally, and I'm going to screw up my secret identity sooner rather than later, I might as well be upfront about it."
"So, wait, let me get this right," Rodney interrupted. "You, or someone like you, is in charge of protecting this 'sector' and there's a 'Green Lantern' for every sector of the galaxy?"
"Pretty much," Kyle agreed with a nod.
"Right, so what's the deal with the Wraith, then?" John asked, leaning forward and scrunching up his forehead. "The guy with the job before you must have been a complete slacker."
Kyle looked faintly uncomfortable. "Well, see, the Guardians draw Lanterns from all over. They like to have a native around, so the Green Lantern for this sector, well, he was one of the Wraith."
"Huh," John said.
"That explains a lot," Elizabeth murmured under her breath.
"What kind of morons do you work for?" Rodney demanded. "They hired a Wraith to protect these people? Didn't they figure out that was like sending the fox to guard the henhouse?"
"Yeah, well, they've seen the error of their ways and sent me," Kyle said defensively.
"I want to know what kind of weapons you're using to fend off an entire galaxy - sector - of predators and war and strife and all that other stuff," John said, crossing his arms and rocking back on his heels.
"Pretty much just the ring," Kyle said, holding up his hand apologetically.
"Let me take a look at that," John said, holding out his own hand, palm up.
"Yeah, right," Kyle said. "Even the ring can't do anything with your hair. Besides, it's coded to work only for me."
"Convenient," John muttered, ignoring the remark about his hair.
"So, wait," Rodney said, suddenly interested. "How did they do that? Biorhythms? Electromagnetic field of the brain? DNA matching? What happens if you die? Will the ring affix itself to a new person?" Rodney advanced a step with every new idea, until Kyle was clutching his hand against his chest.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "You'd have to ask the Guardians."
"Huh," Rodney said, not giving any quarter. "What's it use as a power source?"
"Um. There's this lantern...."
"What Dr. McKay really would like to know," Elizabeth interrupted, "is whether you can recharge our ZPM."
"That glowy thing?" Kyle asked. "No problem. I think."
"More importantly," John asked him, sotto voce as Rodney hauled Kyle bodily toward their power supply, "if the ring can get your hair to stand up like that...how do I get one?"
I'm ashamed it's not crackier.
control_freak80 asked for
Weir/Sumner. Weir is the school teacher and Sumner is the sheriff. Set in the old west.
"Ma'am."
"Sheriff." Elizabeth Weir paused to curtsy at Marshall Sumner, but the glint in her eyes indicated that she sensed an opportunity and when Miz Weir saw an opportunity.
"And what is it that I can do for you, today, ma'am?" Sumner asked, smiling as nicely as he could. Elizabeth Weir might be short-tempered, outspoken, and too damn smart for her own good, but Sumner kind of liked that in a woman. Nice eyes, too, green if he wasn't mistaken. And Marshall Sumner wasn't hardly ever mistaken.
"Aiden Ford," Elizabeth said.
"Good kid," Sumner said agreeably. "Helped wrestle in one of those horse theives the other week. Got his arm bunged up for it, too."
"He did," Elizabeth - he always called her Elizabeth in his head just because it wasn't proper. "It's already a shame he can't attend the fall and spring sessions because of the harvest and the planting, and now he's all laid up and out this winter, too. He has a lot of potential and I'd like to see him complete his education."
"I've got him doing me some chores around the jail," Sumner assured her. "He's a mite old to need more schooling, and he ain't doing no writing with that arm of his. I've got Sheppard teaching him the ropes. He'll make a right good deputy in no time."
"Well. Deputy Sheppard has best not teach him that nasty habit of slouching," Elizabeth said determinedly and Sumner felt his spine creak up another notch as he tried to straighten in his boots.
Blasted woman, he thought, slouching back down again. Trying to paste those Eastern manners on men of the West.
"I'll speak to him about that, ma'am," Sumner said, having no intention to do anything of the kind.
"Thank you, Sheriff," Elizabeth said and smiled at her. Her cheeks pinked up and her eyes twinkled, and before he could help himself, Sumner found himself speaking.
"Do you like horses, Miz Weir?"
Her cheeks pinked even more and she cast her eyes down. "I rode them quite a bit as a chid," she admitted.
Sumner grinned. "I'm breaking a new pair this weekend," he said. "Teach 'em to pull a sleigh. Don't suppose you'd like to help a man out?"
"Why -- I believe I would like that very much," Eliza - Miz Weir said, glancing up at him under his lashes. "Do you like pie, Sheriff?"
"Never met a man yet who doesn't," Sumner told her.
"Perhaps afterward, you could stay for a slice? I bake my pies on Saturday mornings."
Sumner felt himself straighten and didn't bother to slouch again. "Miz Weir," he said. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away."
Also, control_freak80 has kindly loaned me her SG-1, Season 1 DVDs and I have been watching them through bouts of insomnia. There may be detailed reviews later.