#abrae

Fic: Denouement. 

Author: Abrae.

Status: Complete.

Word Count: 1800.

Summary: First snow of the year; From Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: “Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises or eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both and art and a fortunate accident”.

Themes/Genres/Warnings: Biggest theme is self-awareness, then, sincerity. It’s a romance story, but quite the purest definition of it. As for warning, maybe a little of a yearning kind of feeling evoked at reading this.

Narrative: DELICIOUS. Epitome of “brevity is the key to the sublime”. Longing and yearning are powerful literary weapons, and some of the phrases used here are just... 

Character Breakdown: Softest, wisest, soberest, ultimately exquisite.

1. 3 fan arts/fics with the most comments And Take Me From Here (John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, retirement!fic) By Any Other Name (John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, reunion!fic) in transit (Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmerman, post-kiss text!fic)

2. 3 fan arts/fics with the most likes (kudos) Reconciliation (John Watson/Shelrock Holmes, revised!reunionfic) in transit And Take Me From Here

3. Oldest fan art/fic Dulles (Fox Mulder/Dana Scully, post-season 7 finale!fic) 4. Your latest fan art/fic Six Weeks (Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, explicit-lite!fic) 5. Your proudest fan art/ fic Probably And Take Me From Here, mainly because it’s the closest to what I envisioned when I started writing it of all my fics. It’s also the most personal, since I was working through grief and depression of my own through John. 6. Your longest fan art/fic And Take Me From Here (18,892) - I have meta that’s longer, but I’m sticking with fic for this

7. Top 3 crossover fan art/fics None, I’m afraid, although I imagine them a lot. 8. Your favourite character to write/draw in fan art/fic John Watson is a favorite, but I’m slowly starting to really love writing Jack Zimmermann. 9. Favourite lines or favourite scene from a WIP fan art/fic I don’t have any WIPs (that I’m planning to complete) right now, so I’ll do something from a recent one, Waking Up (Eric B/Jack Z):

It begins in the kind of idyllic moment Bitty's never once allowed himself to imagine, but longed for all the same; it blooms like jasmine in the hazy moonlight of a Georgia midsummer. Whispered confessions and shy secrets imperfectly shared through tinny speakers and pixelated pictures, and in all so utterly impossible that it feels like something out of a dream.

And like all dreams, it doesn't last.

The rules are as follows: go to page 7 of a WIP, skip to the 7th line, share 7 lines(or however much you want)  and tag 7 more writers to continue the challenge.

The only WIP I have is one that I dropped a couple of years ago and haven’t picked up, although I keep trying to get @suitesamba to write it for me. It’s a Snape/Harry AU adaptation of The Sound of Music.

All thoughts of making a good impression evaporated, Harry fairly stumbled across the threshold and stood just inside the doorway. Snape looked the younger man over once again; his gaze lingered distastefully on Remus’s robe, at which Harry clutched ineffectually, and eventually came to rest on Harry’s hair. He let escape a long-suffering sigh.

“Tell me, Professor Potter, is this the latest misbegotten fashion, or are you really so inept that you cannot even cast Terego on yourself?”

Harry brought a hand to his hair, and it came away dirtied with soot. Rolling his eyes, he wordlessly cast the charm, then squared his shoulders and ventured further into Snape’s office. The Deputy Headmaster gestured towards a low chair in front of his desk and then took his own seat, shuffling papers for several long moments before looking up at Harry with an expression that suggested he was surprised to still find him there.

Snape cleared his throat, then spoke.

“Professor Potter, you are the fourteenth in a long line of Defence Against the Dark Arts instructors employed at Hogwarts since first you entered these gates,” Snape began, and Harry’s mouth fell open.

“Fourteenth?” he interrupted. “But I thought… is the position still cursed?” he asked warily.

Snape sniffed. “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the position. Only the instructors.”

For one brief moment, it was as though he were a cocky sixth-year again, and Harry couldn’t help but blurt out, “Does that include you, professor?”

Snape’s eyes flashed dangerously, and he set his spidery fingers to dancing over the papers on his desk, until they came to rest on a piece of parchment that he pulled out and handed to Harry with a spiteful flourish.

Like, so, I made one for academic stuff I did, and since I managed a handful of fannish things as well this year, here’s a list. 

Fic

A Man Walks Into a Bar (Johnlockary mildly kinky pic-fic, M)

Kindling (5k, John/Mary, G)

And Take Me From Here (18k, John/Sherlock, M)

Vid

Face to Face (Hannibal/Will - first vid ever; this is the one I want to work on some more)

Vide Cor Meum (Hannibal/Will)

Katana (Hannibal vs. Jack - I think this is the best of these, personally)

Vid Crit (practice)

Hannibal Pechakucha (six clips, 10 seconds each)

Hannibal Trailer exercise

Hannibal “Homage”

Hannibal “Reader”

Directions: pick some passages (2-4 sentences each) from fics you have written that you think are effective at evoking a particular place or mood.

For a time, there's nothing to be heard but soft sips and the muffled roar of the sea. His admonishment notwithstanding, John's not immune to the siren strength of the worsening weather. As a boy, he'd always run into the storms, not away, glorying in the visceral thrill of charged air and beating rain. Harry, with all her audacity, had always shied away, but not John; and now, even with the passage of time, with the loss of Mary and fewer years ahead of him than behind, he can feel it once again - a distant electricity coursing through his veins. 

Lestrade barks out a loud laugh, and they both look over to where Sherlock is crouching by a gnarled cherry tree, examining footprints left in the damp soil. It’s a warm day; the steam of recent rains rises up around them, and even Sherlock has taken off his coat and jacket and rolled up his sleeves in concession to the humidity. John absently notices the light blue of his shirt against the vivid green of the grass - the rich brown of the earth reflected in Sherlock’s dark curls. It makes a pretty picture, lighting John’s eyes in quiet appreciation. 

He is used to solitude, but the silence of his dungeons has always been a cloistered quiet, protective and private, enclosing him in a cocoon of his own making. He has hidden away in the darkness for years, licking his wounds until they have festered in the gloom. But now he hears bird song...the rustle of young leaves...a gurgle of water. Softly diffused light fills the room, and he feels exposed in a way he never has before. This is a more expansive quiet than he has ever known, and it threatens to overwhelm him. He feels his foundations rock, senses a ground swell of memories and emotions rising with a kind of inexorable force that cannot be outrun; alone, here, in a foreign land, there is no place to hide anymore.

It had been a month or so since Ginny had broken up with Dean, and she came to Harry now with purposeful eyes. But while, a year earlier, he might have welcomed the way she insinuated herself alongside him at meals, her cosy, calculated caresses in the Gryffindor common room, or the glitter of her eyes when they caught his across a table, now he was...disenthralled. She was as she seemed, and it wasn’t enough. Harry wanted to coax dark desires into the light, to seduce a recalcitrant heart with sibilant tongue; he wanted to charm a serpent from its lair and, only now, after a year of mourning the loss of one language, did he realise he had been learning another all along.

The morning of the funeral, Frohike pulls his one suit from a moth-infested closet and holds it up for inspection. No holes, but a kind of clammy chill seems fused to its threads. All he sees is Mulder's lifeless body dressed in its own suit, awaiting burial. He pulls the sleeves of his jacket over a thin dress shirt and feels nothing but the cold embrace of frozen earth. It hangs heavily on his shoulders, weighing him down, and he's powerless to dig his way back to the world of the living. No tears; he simply stares at his stark, grieved reflection in the mirror.

Fill out as much or as little as you want, and leave any you can’t remember/don’t know blank.

First Fandom: How are we defining “fandom”? If it’s by being online and part of a community, X-Files. If it’s being passionate about the thing and learning all about the thing and drawing the thing, etc., then Star Wars. The real Star Wars. From “IV” onwards.

First Fanfic Read: It was XF, I know that. But... it’s not coming to me. But since I remember this one better than any other, I’ll say Al Dente by Spookey247 (who was a lovely person, and I wonder how she’s doing today...).

First Slash OTP: Snape/Harry. Anyone who brings a fight to me about this gets blocked, no questions asked.

First Femslash OTP: I can’t say I read a lot of femslash, but I always saw the spark between Xena/Gabrielle, and I do love Inara/Kaylee.

First Het OTP: I was a full-on Mulder/Scully shipper back in the day.

First OT3: Johnlockary

Current Main Fandom: If by “fandom” we still mean “currently obsessed with” and not so much “actively participating in the thing with a large group of people,” then I’d have to say Hannibal. Although I’m still very eagerly awaiting the Sherlock Christmas thing.

Other Fandoms: I tend to be intense about one thing, with a constellation of things I like floating around it. And the constellation is really more a galaxy, so... you know if you see my random reblog what I love.

Last Fanfic Read: The Aiónios series by whiskeyandspite and drinkbloodlikewine, which absolutely did NOT reduce me to an ugly!sobbing wreck in my bed at 1:30 am, with MAFM laying next to me going, “What’s the matter?”

Slash OTP:  I was really late to the slash game, because it’s ultimately about in-text chemistry for me. Currently, Will/Hannibal, because Hannibal is SUCH a sad, heartbroken, besotted little cannibal of a serial killer.

Femslash OTP: I can’t say I have one currently. I have a bunch of Inara/anyone, Scully/anyone, and even an RPF Gillian/anyone likes, though.

OT3:  Still John/Mary/Sherlock. I just really enjoy Mary and Sherlock’s wonderfully convoluted and complicated relationship. Draco/Harry/Snape is another, although the chemistry has to be just right for it to work for me.

How did you find fanfic/fandoms online? I was taking a seminar on media reception in grad school in 2000, and we read Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers. I already had been participating a bit in a discussion board centered on XF, but when I found out about fic I went looking, found Gossamer and Ephemeral, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When did you first start reading fanfic? Spring, 2000.

If you write fanfic, when did you start, in what fandom, and what pairing? 2000, XF, Mulder/Scully.

Do you have a favorite fanfic?  SO many. But I’ll tell you two that will always stick out for me, and if you take it on yourself to read them, let me know what you thought - these are real favorites. Both are Snape/Harry, but the first - Between Constellations - is a wartime AU with a young-but-adult Harry (and the relationship is a gossamer thing), and the second - The Boy Who Died a Lot - is an AU retelling of all canon through a year post-war, in which the relationship is wonderfully motivated. The first I adore because the imagery is unbelievably beautiful, the story... indescribably exquisite - like, I cried SO HARD over this one, in the best of ways, and the author’s interpretation of Harry’s ability to bring about peace is simply one of the most amazing things I’ve read in fic (and it was written by a non-native English speaker to boot; I did a bit of preliminary beta’ing for it before I had to hand it over to someone else because of my schedule). The second, which I did beta, is at once the funniest fic I’ve ever read (also by a non-native speaker of English. with a masterful command of linguistic nuance) and one of the most heartbreaking. I was reading it at the kitchen table, laughing my ass off, and the kids kept coming up to me all, “Mommy, what’s so funny?”

Do You Beta?:  I used to quite a lot, but since things have gotten busy I’ve had to let it go.

Do You Have a Beta?:  No - I always feel guilty asking anyone, and I’m also a control freak about my writing. I actually prefer to have one, since a good beta will see things I didn’t (or not see them and point it out), but it hasn’t been in the stars. Kind people have beta’d for me at different times, though - I always appreciate that. :)

So.

When next Sherlock wakes, it’s not John, but Mary sitting in the chair by his bed, a bright - and expensive, judging from its sheer volume - bouquet of gerbera daisies nodding cheerfully from their vase on the windowsill.

In the end, it's a matter of months, not years.

The first year of John’s tenure at the clinic near his flat is nothing so much as a comedy of errors, performed by a mind-bogglingly endless supply of incompetents.

Once there was a lonely shibui man who went to a bar and found himself being plied with whiskey from random strangers.

From the wastebasket of Sherlock Holmes.

The cockpit is preternaturally quiet.

"Table for three," Mycroft says, unusually subdued.

Jane tosses the pink paper bag, emblazoned with "Ann Summers" for all the world to see, on the sofa, then follows it down with a huff, blowing blonde fringe back from her forehead.

If anyone were to ask, John would say it’s exertion that’s put a bright blush on his face, and certainly the clammy sweat dotting his brow would seem to prove it.