Knight Rider recs, part one.
MUAhahahaha! Knight Rider slash! Told you I wasn't kidding. (Warning: Recs contain excerpts and some plot details.)
Come to think of it, let's jump off with some gen crack!fic, because you have to work up to these things.
"Yeah, but how many people have an AI bonded to them through a neurological implant in their heads?"
Actually, Michael, the direct-mental-link-as-catalyst-for-OOC-angstfest thing has been done in various forms and fandoms--but nowhere more alluringly, I'll grant you, than in Gryph's cracktacular whump-n-glomp universe, Fire & Ice. Usually when I'm confronted with gargantuan AU's like this, particularly ones with heavily featured OC's, my overriding instinct is to back away slowly. I only gave the pilot story an initial skim because I was interested in a whole nother bunch of fics that begin where Fire & Ice leaves off--it was a prereq, basically. Man, though, did I get hooked! I ended up reading the whole thing, then plowing through Hunter, Prey and the uber-dark and weepy Beyond Loyalty (co-written with elfin and arguably the heart of the universe) before skipping around to Stronger Than That and Anniversary.
If you don't have the stomach for unabashedly over-the-top h/c and OOC goofiness, then you definitely want steer clear of this--it's kinda the Michael and KITT version of Beach (OMG! I can't believe that site is still up! Netcom!). If you're in the mood, though, it's wonderful. The author is clearly in love with the universe she's created and it comes through bright and strong in her work. She's not a native English speaker, but does a perfectly competent job with her prose here; the mistakes are mild enough and the stories engaging enough that the read stays fairly smooth. Nicholas MacKenzie, the central original character, is great, and I'm not sure I've ever said that about an OC before. It's positively fascinating to watch Gryph slowly peel away his layers, story by story. Of particular intrigue is MacKenzie's partnership with KARR, a canonically evil version of KITT with whom Gryph does some wildly inventive stuff. MacKenzie and KARR are connected by the same sort of "neurolink" as Michael and KITT, but their histories--MacKenzie's conceived out of whole cloth, KARR's partially canonical--create a very different trajectory for their relationship, one which both rings true and is genuinely enjoyable to follow.
"Nick.... he wanted to kill himself....." Horror and pain swung in [Michael's] voice and when he looked into his friend's eyes, he discovered Nick knew all about it.
"Karr told me. Is he stable now?"
Kitt was far from stable, but Michael understood in what sense of the word Nick had meant it. He nodded slightly.
"He's with me," he murmured. "I won't let him go. Ever."
Nick nodded. "I'll get you a coffee and then you should freshen up a bit."
Michael gave a vague nod and sought out his partner's presence, for now calm and resting but still haunted. He stroked him gently in his sleep, feeling Kitt subconsciously reach out and seek reassurance; reassurance Michael was only to ready to give.
//not alone 'm here never doubt you aren't alone//
//sorry sorry only way//
Michael closed his eyes and let Kitt merge with him again.
Uh, so, you know. Basically what I said. But it's so engaging! And there's so much of it! And it gives you unadulterated warm h/c fuzzies if you're looking for warm h/c fuzzies, which admit it, sometimes you are.
Besides, you'll need the backstory in order to better understand this:
For a few moments there wasn't anything by way of a response. Then he felt it, his own climax - the building anticipation and the fleeting pleasure - sent back to him and immediately he knew the difference between it and what he'd originally felt when he'd been with Bonnie. Kitt's version was underlaid with a love so deep, virtually fathomless, that it gave his own orgasm a quality to it he just didn't recognise.
"Jesus, Kitt...." He didn't know what else to say, what to think, or what to feel.
//I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that//
//no it's okay it's really okay// Reaching for Kitt he gave a brief hug, noting how nervous Kitt seemed about being touched. //it's not okay is it//
Well, I think it's okay, though I suspect that won't be everyone's reaction. First Time is elfin's initial entry in her Chasing Midnight AU, which I'd been especially excited to explore once I'd read Gryph's stuff. It seemed as though elfin were drawing the neurolink storyline to its natural, slashy conclusion, which could potentially be ten kinds of angsty awesome. And it was, for a prequel or two, including the aforementioned First Time. But then I went to delve into the main Chasing Midnight fic itself, and...this happened:
"Michael, where am I?"
"Karr told you what we were doing, remember? You're in Swan's android. You're in a human form. You're safe, I swear to you."
He covered the android's hand with his own. Swan saw it. "Sub-routine e/2."
A quiet whimper escaped the pale lips and Michael felt pressure on his hand as Kitt's fingers closed over it. He might have whimpered a little himself. Because in all the years they'd worked together, in all the months they'd been in each others' minds, this was the first time that Kitt had ever touched him.
ACK! Undo, undo! No, no, no, sorry, this is where I get off. I'm all for neurolinks and wispy electronic tendrils and AI PTSD, but the bedrock of the whole thing is that KITT is inside a frigging car okay. He's housed in a car, or his soul is in a car, or whatever you'd like; once that's permanently gone, I feel like I'm no longer within the KR universe and the pairing completely ceases to interest me. These are nothing more than my own personal druthers, obviously, and AU's are this far-out all the time, and the idea itself is imaginative. But, you know. Bye. (ETA: illeryana points out that KITT actually reverts to car form by the end of CM, and stays that way until the fic Calculating Pi to the Nth Degree--which, it's worth swinging over there just to take a look at the title image manip. Yum.)
Fortunately, elfin has some stuff going on outside the Chasing Midnight AU as well. Dividing Line is the most memorable of her stand-alone works, because it's not to mention the most porny.
"Talk to me, Kitt, please. I need to hear you."
"And I need to feel you. Now."
The idea formed in Michael's head, created by Kitt's order. Michael shifted over, straddling the low central panel. Roughly, he pushed the sheathing down from Kitt's gearshift, revealing the skin-like sensor net that his partner's strange technician had created. It felt smooth and warm, and slightly malleable.
Now you know this is exactly the kind of thing that sprang to mind when you first saw the words "Knight Rider slash." Surprisingly, while I found a couple of other relatively graphic sex!fics involving Michael and (non-android) KITT elsewhere in the fandom, this is really the only one that explicitly has Michael, like, thrusting into car parts. Unless you count a little sloppy, alcohol-induced upholstery frottage. Which I don't.
Like the Bobs said: To be continued!
P.S. Malleable Gearshift would be a good name for a band.
Come to think of it, let's jump off with some gen crack!fic, because you have to work up to these things.
"Yeah, but how many people have an AI bonded to them through a neurological implant in their heads?"
Actually, Michael, the direct-mental-link-as-catalyst-for-OOC-angstfest thing has been done in various forms and fandoms--but nowhere more alluringly, I'll grant you, than in Gryph's cracktacular whump-n-glomp universe, Fire & Ice. Usually when I'm confronted with gargantuan AU's like this, particularly ones with heavily featured OC's, my overriding instinct is to back away slowly. I only gave the pilot story an initial skim because I was interested in a whole nother bunch of fics that begin where Fire & Ice leaves off--it was a prereq, basically. Man, though, did I get hooked! I ended up reading the whole thing, then plowing through Hunter, Prey and the uber-dark and weepy Beyond Loyalty (co-written with elfin and arguably the heart of the universe) before skipping around to Stronger Than That and Anniversary.
If you don't have the stomach for unabashedly over-the-top h/c and OOC goofiness, then you definitely want steer clear of this--it's kinda the Michael and KITT version of Beach (OMG! I can't believe that site is still up! Netcom!). If you're in the mood, though, it's wonderful. The author is clearly in love with the universe she's created and it comes through bright and strong in her work. She's not a native English speaker, but does a perfectly competent job with her prose here; the mistakes are mild enough and the stories engaging enough that the read stays fairly smooth. Nicholas MacKenzie, the central original character, is great, and I'm not sure I've ever said that about an OC before. It's positively fascinating to watch Gryph slowly peel away his layers, story by story. Of particular intrigue is MacKenzie's partnership with KARR, a canonically evil version of KITT with whom Gryph does some wildly inventive stuff. MacKenzie and KARR are connected by the same sort of "neurolink" as Michael and KITT, but their histories--MacKenzie's conceived out of whole cloth, KARR's partially canonical--create a very different trajectory for their relationship, one which both rings true and is genuinely enjoyable to follow.
"Nick.... he wanted to kill himself....." Horror and pain swung in [Michael's] voice and when he looked into his friend's eyes, he discovered Nick knew all about it.
"Karr told me. Is he stable now?"
Kitt was far from stable, but Michael understood in what sense of the word Nick had meant it. He nodded slightly.
"He's with me," he murmured. "I won't let him go. Ever."
Nick nodded. "I'll get you a coffee and then you should freshen up a bit."
Michael gave a vague nod and sought out his partner's presence, for now calm and resting but still haunted. He stroked him gently in his sleep, feeling Kitt subconsciously reach out and seek reassurance; reassurance Michael was only to ready to give.
//not alone 'm here never doubt you aren't alone//
//sorry sorry only way//
Michael closed his eyes and let Kitt merge with him again.
Uh, so, you know. Basically what I said. But it's so engaging! And there's so much of it! And it gives you unadulterated warm h/c fuzzies if you're looking for warm h/c fuzzies, which admit it, sometimes you are.
Besides, you'll need the backstory in order to better understand this:
For a few moments there wasn't anything by way of a response. Then he felt it, his own climax - the building anticipation and the fleeting pleasure - sent back to him and immediately he knew the difference between it and what he'd originally felt when he'd been with Bonnie. Kitt's version was underlaid with a love so deep, virtually fathomless, that it gave his own orgasm a quality to it he just didn't recognise.
"Jesus, Kitt...." He didn't know what else to say, what to think, or what to feel.
//I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that//
//no it's okay it's really okay// Reaching for Kitt he gave a brief hug, noting how nervous Kitt seemed about being touched. //it's not okay is it//
Well, I think it's okay, though I suspect that won't be everyone's reaction. First Time is elfin's initial entry in her Chasing Midnight AU, which I'd been especially excited to explore once I'd read Gryph's stuff. It seemed as though elfin were drawing the neurolink storyline to its natural, slashy conclusion, which could potentially be ten kinds of angsty awesome. And it was, for a prequel or two, including the aforementioned First Time. But then I went to delve into the main Chasing Midnight fic itself, and...this happened:
"Michael, where am I?"
"Karr told you what we were doing, remember? You're in Swan's android. You're in a human form. You're safe, I swear to you."
He covered the android's hand with his own. Swan saw it. "Sub-routine e/2."
A quiet whimper escaped the pale lips and Michael felt pressure on his hand as Kitt's fingers closed over it. He might have whimpered a little himself. Because in all the years they'd worked together, in all the months they'd been in each others' minds, this was the first time that Kitt had ever touched him.
ACK! Undo, undo! No, no, no, sorry, this is where I get off. I'm all for neurolinks and wispy electronic tendrils and AI PTSD, but the bedrock of the whole thing is that KITT is inside a frigging car okay. He's housed in a car, or his soul is in a car, or whatever you'd like; once that's permanently gone, I feel like I'm no longer within the KR universe and the pairing completely ceases to interest me. These are nothing more than my own personal druthers, obviously, and AU's are this far-out all the time, and the idea itself is imaginative. But, you know. Bye. (ETA: illeryana points out that KITT actually reverts to car form by the end of CM, and stays that way until the fic Calculating Pi to the Nth Degree--which, it's worth swinging over there just to take a look at the title image manip. Yum.)
Fortunately, elfin has some stuff going on outside the Chasing Midnight AU as well. Dividing Line is the most memorable of her stand-alone works, because it's not to mention the most porny.
"Talk to me, Kitt, please. I need to hear you."
"And I need to feel you. Now."
The idea formed in Michael's head, created by Kitt's order. Michael shifted over, straddling the low central panel. Roughly, he pushed the sheathing down from Kitt's gearshift, revealing the skin-like sensor net that his partner's strange technician had created. It felt smooth and warm, and slightly malleable.
Now you know this is exactly the kind of thing that sprang to mind when you first saw the words "Knight Rider slash." Surprisingly, while I found a couple of other relatively graphic sex!fics involving Michael and (non-android) KITT elsewhere in the fandom, this is really the only one that explicitly has Michael, like, thrusting into car parts. Unless you count a little sloppy, alcohol-induced upholstery frottage. Which I don't.
Like the Bobs said: To be continued!
P.S. Malleable Gearshift would be a good name for a band.