Fic excerpt meme
Last night I was mentioning this meme to 
scruloose and pondering which WIP to draw on. (With a starting premise of "everything I've posted lately has been Newsflesh, so maybe I should use something else, which by definition means dipping into Warehouse 13 files".) He voted for the Fringe crossover. But I've been teasing
ginny_t with the prospect of platonic Claudia-and-Steve cuddling for weeks now, so since it's all going under a cut anyway, I'm going to use both. Judge not! *g*
Meme, gacked from several people: The game is to find the word "look" in your current work in progress, and post an excerpt from that section of the manuscript.
Up first, a bit from the Warehouse 13/Fringe crossover I've had on the back burner for a couple of months now. Set during S4 of Fringe, technically, and spoilery for the overall series premise, but it's from the W13 POV, with no significant W13 spoilers. Super-brief summary under the cut for the Fringe spoilers: Basically I'm writing about Claudia and Steve accidentally finding out about the red!verse and Claudia being curious about her alternate, who's in the red!verse Fringe division.
**********
"Look," Claudia said, fed up, "Obviously there can't be any huge psychological risks or dangers to the space-time continuum or whatever, since you two are standing here having this argument. Will it hurt anything if I meet her?"
"No," Dr. Bishop said. "The damage to the universes has long since been done. There's no risk to individuals now."
"He's telling the truth," Steve said. He pitched his voice low, but Peter overheard.
"Yeah, and he's also crazy. Second opinion?"
Agent Dunham sighed, running a hand through her hair. "There's no risk that we know of."
"Telling the truth," Steve reported. The second pronouncement was enough to make everyone else in the room stare at them.
"Human lie detector. Comes in handy." Claudia grinned, then turned wary. "Uh, he's non-transferable. Warehouse property. There's a barcode somewhere questionable on his body."
Steve rolled his eyes. "She's lying. About the barcode, anyway."
"So it's all good. I'm a warehouse agent, so I already keep tons of secrets that'd get me recommitted if I blabbed. C'mon, fork her over."
Agent Dunham-the-second (and that was unfair, maybe, but that was the order Claudia had met them in) frowned, the first hint of concern she'd shown since she'd arrived. "Agent--Agent?" Claudia nodded. "Agent Donovan, what's your family situation?"
"I've got an brother off doing experimental physics in Europe. Our parents died when I was a kid."
"Right." Dunham-the-second licked her lips. "Ours...lost her brother a couple of years ago. It messed her up pretty bad for a while there."
"Lost him how?"
"I don't really know the details--physics like that are way outside my area of expertise. Captain Lee's the one with the science background."
Claudia stared at her. "Physics like...what? Like an interdimensional bubble?" She read the answer off Dunham's face and turned on her heel. Steve backed up to give her pacing room. "She couldn't get him out?"
"No." The reply was quiet. "I take it you did?"
"That's how I got involved with the warehouse."
And a much simpler thing: Warehouse 13 fic in which I take advantage of maybe for the FIRST TIME EVER having a favorite female character who's actually tactile with people. Under the cut, we have platonic Claudia and Steve snuggles due to Claudia having a lot to deal with at the moment. (Slightly tweaked to remove all spoilers beyond the fact that Claudia and Steve exist.)
**********
"I've never slept with anyone before," Claudia said. "Uh--I mean, you know what I mean."
"Yes, I knew what you meant."
"Is it too much like a girly slumber party if I admit it's accurate whichever way you take it?"
"Never having been to a girly slumber party, I couldn't say."
"'cause I probably shouldn't talk to a coworker about that, right?"
Steve chuckled. "You've clearly never worked in an actual office. Also, your coworker is lying in bed with you. It is--" He raised his head to look at the clock "--half past three. According to my secondhand understanding of slumber parties, you can now tell me all your feelings about boys and I'll be morally obligated to never breathe a word."
"Huh. I thought you were morally obligated to tell me all your feelings about boys. But what do I know? I've never slumbered it up either. So that puts me at...never slept with anyone, never had sex, and never had a normal girl sleepover party. My freak mojo is intact."
"Don't forget the psych ward. Which I'm only mentioning because it always comes up sooner or later when you get down on yourself like this, so I'm getting it out of the way." He mimed checking a box in the air.
"Right." The bed shifted as Claudia fidgeted. "This is weird. I don't know what to do."
Steve touched her arm. It was nothing he didn't do a dozen times in the course of a workday, but she stiffened, and then made herself relax with palpable effort. "If you're really not comfortable, I can still crash in my room."
"No!"
He could imagine the expression accompanying that response perfectly: it was her "I know I'm not perfect but why can't I do this thing on the first try?!" look.
"Okay," he said, keeping his hand on her arm. "That's fine. Come here if you want." She tensed and forced herself to relax again. "Claud, you hug people all the time. You hug me all the time. Stop telling yourself you don't know what to do. You can't screw it up, I promise."
"Watch me," she muttered.
Steve kept quiet, waiting. Most people did their wavering in their head. Claudia, for all her brilliance, was too visceral a person for that. He could feel her making false starts from the other side of the bed, edging closer and withdrawing again.
It was like coaxing a kitten. He'd had one once, a tiny, skittish fluffball that loved to climb his legs and took forever to figure out how to retract its claws all the way; he'd had to remember not to yelp when it scratched, for fear of driving it into hiding under the couch. It had gotten confused when he changed his clothes, as if they made him a new person that it had to reacquaint itself with.
The kitten had been taken from its mother and littermates too young. For the first few days Steve had lain on the floor and watched it searching, and Olivia had had to explain that the kitten was going to be fine--it just needed to learn the things its mother hadn't had a chance to teach it, but it would forget what it had lost and would be fine if they were kind to it. She'd been right, of course. She always was about things like that.
Claudia was not a kitten. She never forgot anything.
"Claudia," he began, and then her head landed on his chest with a thump, ear unerringly pressed to his heart; he could feel the edges of her earrings digging in. He hugged her tighter than he'd meant to. "See? Not so hard."
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/409491.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW:
scruloose and pondering which WIP to draw on. (With a starting premise of "everything I've posted lately has been Newsflesh, so maybe I should use something else, which by definition means dipping into Warehouse 13 files".) He voted for the Fringe crossover. But I've been teasing
ginny_t with the prospect of platonic Claudia-and-Steve cuddling for weeks now, so since it's all going under a cut anyway, I'm going to use both. Judge not! *g*
Meme, gacked from several people: The game is to find the word "look" in your current work in progress, and post an excerpt from that section of the manuscript.
Up first, a bit from the Warehouse 13/Fringe crossover I've had on the back burner for a couple of months now. Set during S4 of Fringe, technically, and spoilery for the overall series premise, but it's from the W13 POV, with no significant W13 spoilers. Super-brief summary under the cut for the Fringe spoilers: Basically I'm writing about Claudia and Steve accidentally finding out about the red!verse and Claudia being curious about her alternate, who's in the red!verse Fringe division.
**********
"Look," Claudia said, fed up, "Obviously there can't be any huge psychological risks or dangers to the space-time continuum or whatever, since you two are standing here having this argument. Will it hurt anything if I meet her?"
"No," Dr. Bishop said. "The damage to the universes has long since been done. There's no risk to individuals now."
"He's telling the truth," Steve said. He pitched his voice low, but Peter overheard.
"Yeah, and he's also crazy. Second opinion?"
Agent Dunham sighed, running a hand through her hair. "There's no risk that we know of."
"Telling the truth," Steve reported. The second pronouncement was enough to make everyone else in the room stare at them.
"Human lie detector. Comes in handy." Claudia grinned, then turned wary. "Uh, he's non-transferable. Warehouse property. There's a barcode somewhere questionable on his body."
Steve rolled his eyes. "She's lying. About the barcode, anyway."
"So it's all good. I'm a warehouse agent, so I already keep tons of secrets that'd get me recommitted if I blabbed. C'mon, fork her over."
Agent Dunham-the-second (and that was unfair, maybe, but that was the order Claudia had met them in) frowned, the first hint of concern she'd shown since she'd arrived. "Agent--Agent?" Claudia nodded. "Agent Donovan, what's your family situation?"
"I've got an brother off doing experimental physics in Europe. Our parents died when I was a kid."
"Right." Dunham-the-second licked her lips. "Ours...lost her brother a couple of years ago. It messed her up pretty bad for a while there."
"Lost him how?"
"I don't really know the details--physics like that are way outside my area of expertise. Captain Lee's the one with the science background."
Claudia stared at her. "Physics like...what? Like an interdimensional bubble?" She read the answer off Dunham's face and turned on her heel. Steve backed up to give her pacing room. "She couldn't get him out?"
"No." The reply was quiet. "I take it you did?"
"That's how I got involved with the warehouse."
And a much simpler thing: Warehouse 13 fic in which I take advantage of maybe for the FIRST TIME EVER having a favorite female character who's actually tactile with people. Under the cut, we have platonic Claudia and Steve snuggles due to Claudia having a lot to deal with at the moment. (Slightly tweaked to remove all spoilers beyond the fact that Claudia and Steve exist.)
**********
"I've never slept with anyone before," Claudia said. "Uh--I mean, you know what I mean."
"Yes, I knew what you meant."
"Is it too much like a girly slumber party if I admit it's accurate whichever way you take it?"
"Never having been to a girly slumber party, I couldn't say."
"'cause I probably shouldn't talk to a coworker about that, right?"
Steve chuckled. "You've clearly never worked in an actual office. Also, your coworker is lying in bed with you. It is--" He raised his head to look at the clock "--half past three. According to my secondhand understanding of slumber parties, you can now tell me all your feelings about boys and I'll be morally obligated to never breathe a word."
"Huh. I thought you were morally obligated to tell me all your feelings about boys. But what do I know? I've never slumbered it up either. So that puts me at...never slept with anyone, never had sex, and never had a normal girl sleepover party. My freak mojo is intact."
"Don't forget the psych ward. Which I'm only mentioning because it always comes up sooner or later when you get down on yourself like this, so I'm getting it out of the way." He mimed checking a box in the air.
"Right." The bed shifted as Claudia fidgeted. "This is weird. I don't know what to do."
Steve touched her arm. It was nothing he didn't do a dozen times in the course of a workday, but she stiffened, and then made herself relax with palpable effort. "If you're really not comfortable, I can still crash in my room."
"No!"
He could imagine the expression accompanying that response perfectly: it was her "I know I'm not perfect but why can't I do this thing on the first try?!" look.
"Okay," he said, keeping his hand on her arm. "That's fine. Come here if you want." She tensed and forced herself to relax again. "Claud, you hug people all the time. You hug me all the time. Stop telling yourself you don't know what to do. You can't screw it up, I promise."
"Watch me," she muttered.
Steve kept quiet, waiting. Most people did their wavering in their head. Claudia, for all her brilliance, was too visceral a person for that. He could feel her making false starts from the other side of the bed, edging closer and withdrawing again.
It was like coaxing a kitten. He'd had one once, a tiny, skittish fluffball that loved to climb his legs and took forever to figure out how to retract its claws all the way; he'd had to remember not to yelp when it scratched, for fear of driving it into hiding under the couch. It had gotten confused when he changed his clothes, as if they made him a new person that it had to reacquaint itself with.
The kitten had been taken from its mother and littermates too young. For the first few days Steve had lain on the floor and watched it searching, and Olivia had had to explain that the kitten was going to be fine--it just needed to learn the things its mother hadn't had a chance to teach it, but it would forget what it had lost and would be fine if they were kind to it. She'd been right, of course. She always was about things like that.
Claudia was not a kitten. She never forgot anything.
"Claudia," he began, and then her head landed on his chest with a thump, ear unerringly pressed to his heart; he could feel the edges of her earrings digging in. He hugged her tighter than he'd meant to. "See? Not so hard."
Originally posted at http://umadoshi.dreamwidth.org/409491.html. Comment here if you like, or comment there using OpenID. Comments at DW: