Raquel / Kaitsurinu

(Header art by me)

Rec culture isn't dead! It's just back from a long hiatus.

Here are mine, from someone who's been plunking out fic about these two idiots in love for 25 years. My classics. Oft-revisited. Buckle into that five-point harness.

ONGOING FICS (go spam them with support!!):

Dirty Computer - by DoctorMegalomania (AO3 || Tumblr). There are so few authors that I will drop everything for upon seeing that update email from the Archive - and this is absolutely worth it. The Doc can write all of us under the table. The scene of Heero stopping and breaking down outside the car, after reconnecting with Duo, genuinely made my heart flutter and gave me that perfect-fic-feeling. Written so, so well. Brilliant ideas. Horrifying, thrilling, romantic, mysterious, dense, long, and still going!! All my favorite qualities. A vanguard of the fandom, decades on from when Wing aired on Toonami. Go send some love! Support = updates = fic to enjoy = support = updates, and so on and so on. Author's Summary: Years after the war, nothing is what anyone hoped for. Peace reigns supreme.

COMPLETED FICS

★ Axiomatic - by Jei (turnippatch) via their personal website. I'm linking this particular version of the Turnip Patch because if you've never had the pleasure of reading fic hosted independently, then here you go. I'm personally so attached to and enamored of this gray Comic Sans and Arial on a blue background, but if you hate that idea, try the LJ version. Heero 1st Person POV (for which I am admittedly a sucker). Brilliantly written, with dense, beautiful tech jargon and prose. Duo is confusing, in the best way, to both Heero and ZERO. The climax always makes my heart flutter; these fuckers are so in love. Stone-cold classic of the pairing, not on AO3, so drink up! I also recommend the sequel - Additive Identity Author's Summary: Submitted to gwyaoi's 2004 OTP novella challenge. (GWYAOI Novella challenges - I miss them so much!!) Cheesy summary:  After five years of being blissfully unaccounted for, Heero Yuy finds himself called back into service when the Preventers report that something highly classified has been stolen from their custody.  Reunited with his former teammates, he must hunt down the missing hardware, but just who is behind the theft, what is the ultimate goal, and what price will he have to pay? Pairing:  Take a good long look at the rest of this page.  What do you think is my OTP?  Although, if you think too hard about it, you'll find this OTP has a little... twist. Word Count:  Something like 156k for the whole thing. Warnings:  Heero POV.  Yes, the whole bloody thing is one long sustained Heero POV.  Hope you like him.  Also, random technobabble of the fictitious sort.  And of course, don't go into this thinking it'll be all full of lemony goodness, or even action-packed adventure.

★ Grief and a Headhunter's Rage - by Jei (turnippatch). I can vouch for basically all of Jei's turnippatch fics, but this was my first. A long, sweet, dense, philosophical hospital AU. Again, one of my absolute favorites from one of my favorite authors. Jei is possibly the reason I can seemingly only write long fic, because these were so damn satisfying to read for the first time, the fifth time, the twentieth time. Author's Summary: Warnings:  ha, the day i need to write real warnings for a fic... is the day i need to write real warnings for a fic. This fic is long.  Long as in 225 kb long.  This fic is about hospitals and doctors and medicine, of which I know practically nothing.  This fic is about anthropology, of which I know very little.  This fic is an AU, and it is angsty and depressing at times because it has a central theme of death.  This fic contains the growth of a quiet, but powerful bond between Heero and Duo that is essential to the point, but is not the point itself.  This fic is, oddly enough, inspired by the introduction of Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, by Renato Rosaldo.

★ Best Laid Plans - by Jei (turnippatch). Duo is the hot employee at the grocery store; Heero is the lonely college student who stops by. My heart be fucking still. Another stone-cold classic. Normal-life college kids AU. The reality the boys deserved, but didn't get, in canon. Author's Summary: Submitted to gwyaoi's 2003 1x2 AU novella challenge.  Inspired by the guy at the Whole Foods Market. Summary:  Heero.  Duo.  AU.  Slow development of relationship.  (i don't write anything else, do i?)  Grocery shopping.  'Nuff said.  Or, if it's not, I think this is its official tag line: Heero Yuy had resigned himself to being a grump for the rest of his life, and he was well on his way, too, until he met one Duo Maxwell, who somehow managed to turn all his notions upside-down. Pairing:  the limit of f(t) = 1/t + (1x2) as t approaches infinity.  That is to say, it asymptotically approaches (1x2).  Which actually makes a beautiful sort of sense, since it has to go through (1+2) first... and you notice that f(t) never even gets close to zero, too, which means that there will never be nothing between them... and if we take t to be the time domain, where t > 0, then f(t) will always be positive... ::blinkblink:: I can't believe I just said that.  Anyway.

★ A Grudging Seduction - by Bane's Desire (via alittlepieceofgundamwing_archivist, doing the Lord's work). A simple trope done to absolute perfection. Duo is issued a special mission that quickly becomes a personal one - keep Heero alive by any means necessary. Sometimes a trope-y story just hits all the right buttons. And this one is that, for me. An oldie, but a goodie.

★ Ma Petite Mort - by anon (an orphaned account). I love this one. I am also a sucker for fic that acknowledges the worldliness of the Wing canon - people speak different languages, live in different places, and come from different cultures. I think it's a tough line to walk, writing Heero as losing himself in indulgences, but anon walks it well and I love it. Author's Summary: When the war ends, a lost boy finds comfort in the arms of a woman, taken under the wings of a prostitute. He learns about carnal lust, until the desires of his heart are finally made clear.

★ The Drums of Heaven - by sol1056 (FFN | AO3 | Tumblr) - link is to the old stomping ground (FFN), where the story is complete. I would do whatever it takes for it to be fully archived on AO3 - I cut my teeth on FFN starting in 2000, so I have affection for it, but the site is truly decrepit and broken now. @sol1056, sincerely, if you see this, I will draw whatever you want. Full color, 300 DPI in exchange for full transfer to A03. No edits needed. I love this fic so, so much. It is the thing I think of when I think fanfiction - 'The Drums of Heaven' pops into my head, fully formed. Please! Read it and give some reviews/support! Also, the absolute best techno-writing in GW. Author's Summary: Five years after Mariemaia, Heero meets up again with the only people he ever considered friends... but Duo and Trowa have disappeared into the underworld. When did the world go wrong?

★ Domino + ★ Ready to Fall - by Miss_Murdered. To me, the mission-centric, Duo-Maxwell-on-the-Edge fics. Dark, romantic, tense, funny, sexy, and kept me guessing all the way til the end. I'm a strange person, so for some reason I read the sequel before the first installment, but they can be read separately. Even more sweeping and romantic if read in order. There are some truly haunting sequences and probably my favorite sex scene in all 1x2x1 history. Hair-pulling, what can I say? Duo's made for it. Miss_Murdered, you can write like a motherfucker. I bow to you. Author's Summary for Domino: After pushing Heero and the other former Gundam pilots away, Duo finds himself joining a specialist undercover Preventer unit. When a dangerous gang on L2 threatens Quatre's life, Duo has to face the past to stop a potential terrorist attack and reunite with a former ally. 1x2

★ White Flags - by Elisa811. My newest love on this list. Again, this is Heero POV (can you sense a theme? I fucking love POV). And it's written in that perfect way, where you're left pining and confused and as in love with Duo throughout. I was clicking the second I saw that update, which was often at 6AM after the kid woke me up, and rereading over and over. Great pacing, vivid scenes, and a beautiful pay-off. The fifteen-year pause was more than worth it! I also made art for it, I love this so dearly! A new classic! Author's Summary: For years, Heero had been trained to maintain absolute control over himself and his emotions, with the sole purpose of completing any mission. But real life—the life he finds himself in after the war—isn’t a mission. Suddenly, all the control he thought he had turns out to be an illusion, shattered by the complexity of ordinary life and human relationships, for which he was never truly prepared.

★ Perchance to Dream - by The_Lady_Crane. Brilliant, surprising, sweet, philosophical, funny, and an absolute dream of a concept. I could never have thought of this, but it's damn near perfect and very well-written! Probably the most fantastical entry on this list, but another new classic! Author's Summary: Duo falls asleep and wakes up inside Heero's mind. It's a rare opportunity to study the psyche of the perfect soldier - if he can survive the trip.

★ Heero Yuy, L6, and the Second Suit Wars - by ellewrites. I think, by virtue of being posted in the early 2010s, when there was kind of a natural drop-off in fandom participation for Wing (early days of AO3, nearing the end of the fandom's biggest years on FFN), that this absolute gem kind of missed pinging the collective radar. But this is a STONE COLD CLASSIC. If there were ever something I could consider as dense and complex and fully fleshed out as the canon world, it'd be this. Yes, it's Heero's POV (well, it's complicated, but most deliciously). Brilliant, tip to tail. Turtles, all the way down. The best I'm-gonna-beat-you-up-then-fuck-you-senseless sex scenes, hands down. Heartbreaking and wonderful and vivid. Author's Summary: Jack Kaufmann has no recollection of the braided man who claims they were once more than friends, but his quest to recover his memories leads him to discover a plot much larger than himself that is a threat to the peace he'd once fought to protect... 1x2x1, post EW, warnings at top.

★ The Stand-In by The Manwell (Manniness) - In a similar vein to the previous entry - lovely writing, sweet and simple concept executed brilliantly. Makes my heart ache and flutter. (And yes, it's Heero POV... sue me.) Author's Summary: When Heero Yuy collapses at the conclusion of Endless Waltz, the cause is assumed to be the injuries he sustained while firing on the Brussels estate. But the truth is far stranger...

★ Trial and Error by Maldoror_Chant. Easily the funniest entry on this list. I love it. Written as sharp as a whip - which is the norm from Maldoror_Chant. No one can write these situations quite like them. CLASSIC. Author's Summary: Heero Yuy's mission planner Date: AC199 Mission objective: Find compatible partners for Gundam Pilots 2, 3, 4 and 5 in order to secure their emotional well-being. Timeframe: Undefined. Difficulty: Moderate, despite lack of personal information on the subject of romantic affection. How hard can it be to get people to fall in love?

★ Captain Maxwell by LostMyAccount. Fucking 'Captain Maxwell.' Heartbreaking. Genuinely the first time I teared up reading fic. Beautiful, torturous, and ambiguous. The image of Heero standing, tears in his eyes, in that apartment was as clear as day. A home run of a story that doesn't let up, or let go. *chef's kiss* Author's Summary: Duo does everything he can to save his crew when their Preventers ship is damaged and veers off course in space. He wants to go home. He is also faced with the reality that he wants a life he doesn't have.

★ Thousand Words by ExecutiveShrimp. You can maybe tell by now that I love a sort of sex-comedy premise turned soul-crushing romance, but like the memes say, I'll read these two idiots falling in love a thousand times, in thousands of words. If you like college AU, a Can't Miss Fic. And they are horny college kids, for sure! Author's Summary: AU, 2x1: Duo and Heero have to share a dorm room in college and they become best friends. When they discover that neither has time for, nor interest in a girlfriend, they explore a friends with benefits relationship. But sex never remains uncomplicated.