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12/13/11--13:22: wheee! (chan 1930640)

Yuletide story first draft is finished, yay! It needs work, but at least now I've got the basic shape of the thing.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


12/19/11--11:20: update (chan 1930640)

1) I saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and liked it hugely. It had a better story than the first one, the distinctive visual feel seemed more . . . integrated, or something, and it was slashier, with much less attempt to paste heterosexuality onto Holmes. It was not free of problems, notably (spoiler!) (skip) randomly killing off Irene Adler--I wasn't sorry to see her go, but I'd rather she'd been written off in a non-fridgey way. But overall it was great fun.

2) My Yuletide story has been sent to my beta.

3) As I was working on the Yuletide story, I noticed a Thing in the source that I'd never noticed before, which I'm very eager to talk about, but that'll have to wait until after the reveal, I guess.

4) I made this gingerbread cake yesterday. I used over twice as much ground ginger as the recipe called for, plus about a tablespoon of fresh grated ginger (added along with the lemon zest) and a bit less cinnamon. It's yummy. Especially with lemon curd, which I acquired on impulse a few days ago.

ETA: I didn't bother with the frosting; it didn't strike me as necessary. And if you make this, you might want to line the bottom of your pan with greased parchment paper or aluminum foil. My cake stuck to the bottom of the pan a bit, which was sad.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


12/21/11--10:46: worse even than I was expecting (chan 1930640)

Dear LJ,

I want my margins back. The new look of the default comment page is hideous and taking away subject headers in comments was a bad idea. But in particular, I want my fucking margins back! First the AO3 took away margins, and now you've followed suit. What does everybody have against margins? A huge wall of text across a wide screen is not a good look, whatever Facebook or whoever the hell you're modelling yourself after is wearing these days.

I've always used the default comment page style because it's the only one where comments nest properly, but all these changes are stupid and ugly. In what universe is taking away features a good idea?

No more paid account for me, I think. I'll be paying DreamWidth from now on. I know you fulfill an important role for Russian political bloggers, but that doesn't mean it's okay to ignore your other users and introduce huge "non-negotiable" changes over their protests. I've stuck by you for years, but I'm fed up.


12/25/11--08:26: prezzies! (chan 1930640)

Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating.

I am the luckiest boy in fandom this Christmas, because I got THE BEST PRESENTS OMG!

vilakins sent me two wonderful Tintin figurines (Tintin and Haddock), and they flew all the way around the world, thus becoming almost as well-travelled as the real things, and arrived in my letter box on Christmas Eve. I made squeaky noises of glee as I unwrapped the parcel, and more as I immediately discovered that yes, they can be positioned in a hug, although slightly awkwardly. Thank you, vilakins, you are awesome!

And for Yuletide I got two absolutely gorgeous, perfect perfect perfect stories. The Wine Dark Sea is Tintin fic, a moving and complex look at Haddock's pre-Tintin life. It weaves together three important strands--Haddock's relationships to the sea, to alcohol, and to other men/his own sexuality--into an amazing whole. It's the Haddock backstory I was craving but could never have written myself.

With the Wild Geese is Colditz fic (!!!), 21,000+ words of rich, thought-provoking, beautifully-structured, emotionally-absorbing Colditz fic that somehow incorporates everything I have ever wanted to see explored, from issues of nationalism to the difficulty of being a gay man in an atmosphere (a POW camp) of situational homosexuality. Colditz is a teeny tiny fandom, but I think you can read this story without knowing the fandom, or at least without knowing more than you could glean from Wikipedia; it fully explores the characters and the situation. Please, please read it. It is just that good, and its totally anonymous author whose identity I do not in any way suspect deserves more readers than just me. If you need a further incentive, it crosses deliciously over with John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (but will still work fine if you don't know that novel).

Happy Kit is happy, oh yes.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


12/28/11--17:09: "If there had been no one else to see, I would have put my arms around him" (chan 1930640)

My latest reading is a deeply obscure novel called The Cage, by Dan Billany and David Dowie. It's an autobiographical story about their imprisonment as POWs in Italy during the Second World War, and has been described as "the only book about POW homosexuality from the homosexual point of view." (I'm paraphrasing as I had to return the source, Adrian Gilbert's POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939-45, to the library, but you get the gist).

The fact that the book even exists is a miracle. When Italy surrendered in 1943, the commandant of the camp Billany and Dowie were in defied German instructions and allowed all his Allied prisoners to leave and make their way to Allied lines as best they could. (In camps where this didn't happen, the prisoners were transported to Germany.) During their voyage, Billany and Dowie chose to leave their manuscript in the care of an Italian family who had helped them, with instructions to mail it to England when they could. Along with a third man, Alec Harding, Billany and Dowie made it nearly to the Allied lines but then disappeared in the Apennine mountains in late 1943. Presumably they died there.

In 1946, the people who'd been left the manuscript were finally able to send it to Billany's parents, and it was published in 1949.

Billany and Dowie were probably lovers. The only biography of Dan Billany (written, unfortunately, by two amateur local-history aficionados with no training as historians and some very odd ideas about, among other things, homosexuality) claims they weren't but that Billany was unrequitedly in love with Dowie. It's true that Dowie was engaged to be married, but gay and bisexual men have been known to marry women; Billany was certainly gay, but his surviving diaries talk about his own feeling that he ought to be married someday (he's less than enthusiastic). There's also some evidence that Dowie initially rejected Billany's love--here are the last two stanzas of a poem of Billany's, written on the flyleaf of a book he gave to Dowie:

Whatever you may think or say or do,
I love you and will love you 'til I die,
And those are facts which don't depend on you
And which I cannot alter if I try.
You say your heart is hard and will not yield -
So much the worse, since there my love is sealed.

So why not make the best of the position?
Let's lay our self-protective armour by,
There's common kindness in our disposition
And common sense and plain humanity.
For God's sake let's be easy as before,
And trust each other and be sane once more.

On the other hand, they were emotionally intimate enough to write a tremendously intimate novel together (yes, I promise I'll talk about the book soon), and Adrian Gilbert, who interviewed men who knew Billany and Dowie and who, unlike the authors of Billany's biography, doesn't seem weirded out by homosexuality, takes it for granted that they were a couple. They were certainly widely assumed/rumored to be by other camp inmates.

I like to imagine that after Dowie's initial rejection, they did become a couple. Also that they decided to hide out in Italy rather than return to the war, stayed after the war ended, and did not in any way freeze to death on a mountain somwhere.

As for the book, it's odd and sometimes funny and sometimes heartbreaking. The first half is an honest (as far as I can tell) but rather sprightly slice-of-life POW narrative, told with lots of black humor. The second half focuses on the difficult relationship between David (Dowie) and the fictional character Alan, who the evidence suggests is based on Dan Billany. (Dan also appears as a supporting character, primarily as the advisor who tries to smooth things over between Alan and David.) Alan is in love with David; he shows it by giving David gifts of food and cigarettes and basically following him around with doglike devotion, and eventually declares it outright. David, who is presented as sexually interested in women, finds Alan's love painful and often repulsive, not primarily because of its sexual component (although he does mention being nervous that Alan will want sex from him) but because he feels Alan is too emotionally demanding, that his apparently selfless devotion is a kind of blackmail. Alan, in David's view, is so desperate for his love that he puts on an act, concealing his real self and thus not giving David a chance to care for him.

I found the narrative intermittently agonizing, because I have been Alan, and I have to some extent been David coping badly with the guilt and awkwardness of not sharing someone's romantic feelings, and my heart breaks for them both at times. There are sections from each's point of view, which not only contributes to managing the reader's empathy, it also keeps Alan from being Othered as queer characters were in many straight-focused works of the period.

Nevertheless, there's a level--several levels--on which this book is homophobic. There's a lot of pop-Freudian hoohah about Alan's emotional development being arrested in a childish state, and his fear of women (which I read as fear of the relationship he's expected to have with women, i.e. fear of compulsory heterosexuality), and it's suggested at various points that True Manly Friendship might cure Alan's "neurosis" and make him straight. But other aspects of the book resist this reading; every character basically says that the problem isn't so much who Alan loves as how he loves, while Dan tells David that David's coldness and rejection are as much a problem as Alan's obsession (and David eventually concurs). Alan himself, although he toys with Freudian narratives of neurosis and cure ("A woman substitute? A mother-substitute, I reckon. Yes, by God, that's the source of my longing to sleep in his arms.") but in the end, sticks to his own understanding of his love as love:

I feel you always keep a certain barrier of distrust, David, and unless you can drop that entirely and guard nothing from me, you will never know how good I can be. You see, I really do genuinely care for you--you can let me put my arm round your shoulder and not feel any embarrassment or aversion, but just relax in the knowledge that I genuinely feel like that about you. You really are safe with me, but you will never know that until you try it out. And I see all the time that you are afraid to commit yourself so immensely. Yet it is yourself you are afraid of--not me. You are afraid of the deep human sympathy and warmth in you which urges you to trust me. I think you may in time learn not to be afraid. I really am trustworthy. You need have no defences against me."

And David has a revelation, coming to see the love for Alan that he's actually felt all along:

It was truth all right. He cared for me, in myself . . . The barrier between us was gone completely, not a trace of it remained. God, but I felt purged. Light and fresh air flowed into me; God, how I stretched and soaked in the relief from the strain of doubt and fear that had weighed on me so long. He and I were at last--at last--in the same world. I felt like crying. I could have put my arms round him. He knew it. He could not understand it, but he knew it. If there had been no one else to see, I would have put my arms around him. I could, I wanted to. I was not afraid of him now."

There are still problems. David won't put his arms around Alan because someone might see. And in the next paragraph, the last in the book, it's said that David wants to "lead [Alan] back to the world of life," which can be interpreted as leading him into a "normal" heterosexual life. But it doesn't have to be interpreted as such, I think; the previous narrative has emphasized how isolated Alan is, how until he fell in love with David he'd had no ability to feel anything for anyone. So I think the conclusion doesn't have to be "David will teach Alan how to be straight," but "David and Alan will teach each other how to love better, with trust and openness and self-respect." Certainly, at the end of the book David sees his future as bound up with Alan's, and as a happy one. The book's concluding sentences are: "We should not be fighting each other any more. For us the war was over."

Some of the apparent homophobia in the narrative is coding, I think, to produce a book that could be published. Some of it is the time; Mary Renault's strongly pro-gay The Charioteer, published in 1953, gives its main character the standard Freudian background of an abandoning father and clinging mother as the explanation for his homosexuality. (Although other gay men in the book have noticeably different family histories.) Some of it is probably Billany and Dowie working out their ideas about their sexualities and their relationship, trying to make sense of themselves in a world that defined them as sick and criminal. Billany definitely had some self-hatred and desire to be straight, as his diary entries about feeling he should get married testify.

Do I wish this book was more clearly gay-positive? Of course. But it would be tremendously unfair to blame its authors for not having the advantages of the significantly less homophobic culture we in the west now benefit from. (Obviously I'm not saying everything is sweetness and light for queer people now. But even the most perfunctory reading in queer history shows how much better things have gotten since the 1940s-1950s.)

If you can get hold of it, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in gay history, POW experiences, or the Second World War generally. It's long out of print, although supposedly a new edition is being prepared that will include material omitted when the book was first published, which I'm hoping includes more specifically queer content. For more info on the new edition, go here and scroll down.

The copy I read, I got through interlibrary loan from the Air University Library on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. If the circulation card in the back is to be believed, I may be the first person to have requested this book since 1963. As I look at the list of names of the men who borrowed it in the 1950s and early 1960s (majors, lieutenant colonels, etc.) I wonder what they were looking for in this novel--were some of them gay men who'd heard this was a queer book?--and whether they found something that helped them.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


12/28/11--21:45: Yuletide recs, part 1 (chan 1930640)

I've been very very slowly reading through Yuletide, cherry-picking the fandoms that interest me most, and I have a few recs to share from the first half of the alphabet.



A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Left Turn on Red (1499 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Control (Fry & Laurie)/Tony Murchison
Characters: Control (Fry & Laurie), Tony Murchison
Summary: It wouldn't do at all for enemy agents to get wind of Control's weakness. They're going to have to do something about that.

Very funny, with perfect character voices.


Arthurian mythology

Knight's Move (1056 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Arthurian Mythology
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Lancelot du Lac/Arthur Pendragon, Galahad/Mordred
Characters: Arthur Pendragon, Lancelot du Lac, Mordred (Arthurian), Galahad (Arthurian), Guinevere (Arthurian)
Summary: Au/Future Fic; Arthur Pendragon, Once and Future King, is replenished and renewed following his 'sojourn' on Avalon. Thousands of years have passed and his knights are re-gathering, reincarnated and re-learning their roles. As the last member of the British Royal Family lies dying and Arthur prepares for his takeover, it is all observed by another whose fate was entangled with these men.

Dystopian Arthuriana!


like holly berries (1703 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Arthurian Mythology
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Gawain/Lady Bertilak, Gawain/Bertilak de Hautdesert
Characters: Gawain, Lady Bertilak, The Green Knight, Arthur Pendragon, Lancelot, Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, Mordred, Guinevere (Arthurian), Morgan le Fay
Summary: Gawain, who thinks himself the least of all of Arthur's knights, finds his own adventure. A retelling of the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Beautiful, understated writing and an intriguing take on Gawain.


Black Books

Swine (3499 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Black Books
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Fran Katzenjammer, Bernard Black, Manny Bianco
Summary: A pig of a day.

A rare Black Books fic that's as funny as the show itself.


Deadpool (comics)

Getting Paid (2364 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Deadpool (Comics), X-Force (Comics), Marvel 616
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Deadpool, Weasel, Logan (X-Men), Warren Worthington III, Deathlok, Fantomex, Taskmaster
Summary: What happens in campus Illuminati assassin squad stays in campus Illuminati assassin squad.

Deadpool POV is not easy, but this story does it brilliantly and hilariously. You don't need to be up on every detail of Marvel canon to enjoy it, either.


Emma - Jane Austen

Love and Longing (4235 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Emma - Jane Austen
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Emma Woodhouse / OFC
Characters: Emma Woodhouse, George Knightley
Summary: Emma learns that she has much yet to know -- about herself, and about love.

Charmingly written, with a good grasp of Austen's language. Plausibility is a bit strained here and there (although not in terms of Emma's sexuality--she's probably the slashiest of all the Austen heroines) but the story still works.


Gay Pirates (song)

Bottom of this Blue Ocean (1283 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Gay Pirates (song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Major Character Death
Relationships: Narrator/Sebastian (Gay Pirates)
Characters: Narrator (Gay Pirates), Sebastian (Gay Pirates)
Summary: He'd always wanted to be a chef.

I have mixed feelings about the song, but this fic is subtle, moving, and beautifully written.


Hamlet

A Document in Madness (4941 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: Mature
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Laertes (Hamlet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Polonius, Gertrude (Hamlet), Claudius (Hamlet)
Summary: Laertes knows what is rotten in the state of Denmark. He'd really rather not return, but finds himself summoned home on the the death of the king.

A brilliant merger of Hamlet with the Lovecraftian mythos; it also takes one of my least favorite characters, Laertes, and makes him fascinating.


Houses of the Holy (1131 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: Mature
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Hamlet/Laertes, Hamlet/Ophelia
Characters: Hamlet (Hamlet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Laertes (Hamlet), Polonius
Summary: Haunted mansion AU. The Denmark family lives in the kind of house that swallows you whole.

This is so AU that it's only tangentially connected to the play, but it's atmospheric and well-written.


Storyteller (1097 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Horatio, Fortinbras, Hamlet (Hamlet)

Horatio tells Hamlet's story. Again and again, in infinite versions.


Lord Peter Wimsey

Go and Catch a Falling Star (7085 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers, Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey, Amy Pond/Rory Williams
Characters: Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Mervyn Bunter, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, The Doctor
Summary: "No," Harriet Vane said, having given it some thought. "I don't suppose I do believe in spontaneous human combustion."

A clever crossover with good Harriet POV and an interesting plot. There's a bit much het for my taste, but Bunter's particular place in Peter's life is acknowledged, which is more than a lot of het fics do in this fandom.


I also want to reiterate my recommendation of the two fics written for me: With the Wild Geese (Colditz) and The Wind Dark Sea (Tintin). More detailed reviews of both are here; I'll just add that these two are my favorites of all the Yuletide stories I've read so far. I'd be praising them to the skies even if they hadn't been written for me.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


12/29/11--20:30: roasted beet salad with sesame miso dressing (chan 1930640)

This evening I've been making a bunch of food to help prepare for the next few days, which I expect to be tiring. I made dashi (Japanese fish broth, recipe here), then made a cucumber and wakame (seaweed) salad, started making simmered konbu (still simmering), and the beet salad, which was a bit of an experiment. The dressing is one normally used on green beans, but Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, from which I got the recipe, says it's good on many vegetables. And I'd bought some beets, and I wanted to try a different dressing than my usual (and very delicious) vinaigrette of olive oil, mustard, and lemon.

I'm eating the result now, and I'd say that with one caveat, which I'll get to, it's a great success.

Beet Salad With Sesame Miso Dressing

3 large GOLDEN beets
4 tablespoons (80 grams) red miso paste
2 generous tablespoons Asian sesame paste (not tahini)
1.5 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon mirin
Water or dashi

Wash the beets, wrap them in foil, and roast them in a moderate (375 F) oven until tender. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix the miso, sesame paste, sugar, and mirin. Thin a bit with some dashi, if you have it, or water.

When the beets are tender but not mushy, remove from the oven, unwrap, and let them cool enough to handle. Peel them (this should be easily done with fingers) and cut them into half-moons. Mix with the dressing and serve and/or save until later. It should probably last fine for a couple of days in the fridge.

The reason I specify golden beets in capslock is because I used red beets, and it didn't occur to me that this would be a problem until I saw the lovely golden-brown color of the dressing, and the dripping redness of the beets I was about to add to it, and thought "Uh oh." It still tastes fine, but it would be a lot prettier with golden beets.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/01/12--06:14: fame at last! (chan 1930640)

Or, you know, not. But it's the Yuletide reveal!

I wrote Journeys End (In Lovers Meeting) (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Jim Prideaux/Bill Haydon), and also [REDACTED, oops, the Madnesses haven't been revealed yet.].

And as I suspected, the amazing halotolerant wrote both of the stories I received: The Wine Dark Sea (Tintin, Haddock) and With the Wild Geese (Colditz, Dick Player/Pat Grant). Wheeeee! Thank you, Halo!


ETA: Okay, I guess the Yuletide Madness stories have been revealed too, it just took a little bit longer. So, I also wrote a short treat, Occam's Foxtrot (Colditz, Pat Grant/Dick Player).



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/01/12--19:14: I'm a fandom snowflake! (chan 1930640)

I haven't been around much the last couple of weeks due to Christmas-season retail, but I'm going to try to participate in akamine_chan's Fandom Snowflake Challenge.




The first day's challenge is:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.



I actually have very little shame about self-reccing; I've done it before here and there. So this time I'm not going to rec what I think are my best stories (hint: Midwinter, In the House of Dust, Dismantle the Sun), but stories that haven't had a lot of readers, either because they're older or they're in even more obscure fandoms than usual.

All links go to the AO3. The stories are on DW and LJ too and can be found using the master lists on either journal.

A New Era (1002 words) by kindkit
Fandom: Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Terry Collier/Bob Ferris
Summary: Another way the night before Bob's wedding might have turned out.

I like the dialogue in this one, and the gradual awkward honesty between the characters.


Of Woe or Wonder (1754 words) by kindkit
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne
Summary: There are things Giles will never know.

My one attempt at BtVS comicsverse fic. There is canonical character death as part of the background--the character's already dead at the start of the story. Sort of.


Wouldn't Be Make Believe (the Mirror, Mirror Remix) (1647 words) by kindkit
Fandom: Harry Potter - Rowling
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Characters: Original Character - Character, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black
Summary: Memory can be a comfort. Or not.

It's from the POV of a magic mirror. Do you really need more inducement than that?



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/03/12--09:33: Fandom Snowflake challenge, day 2 (chan 1930640)

The Day 2 challenge is:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Drop a link to your post in the comments. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.

My bookmarking habits have never been good, and since Delicious went all weird it's even harder for me to keep track of stuff. But I've tried. Mostly I focused on the "small fandoms" aspect of the challenge, with the additional element of only including creators who are not personally known to me, i.e. are not on my LJ f-list or my DW circle.



The Beauty That Remains (The Hero Remix) by randomalia (Horatio Hornblower bookverse). This gen story focuses on Hornblower's friend Bush, who canonically lost a leg in action; as a result the Navy retired him from the sea and put him in charge of a naval supply yard at Sheerness. (Eventually he went back to sea, with . . . mixed results.) Bush here is lonely, melancholy, not having an easy time coming to terms with the loss of the only life he's ever known, and the story does a great job of conveying deep emotion with subtlety.

Elementary my dear captain, by Puffintalk (Tintin). This is a charming piece of Tintin-and-Haddock fanart (worksafe and not noticeably shippy) that pastiches a famous Sherlock Holmes illustration. I especially like the use of monochrome and shadow.

This Sweet and Bitter Orange Mood, by Tevere (Inspector Chen series by Liz Williams; not rated, features an implied m/f/m relationship). I'm cheating a little, because I've recced this before (it was a Yuletide story), but I still think it's awesome and the fandom, about a police inspector dealing with occult mischief in Singapore 3, where Chinese gods and demons take an all-too-active part in human affairs, is pretty obscure. Here's what I said last time: "This exquisitely detailed, subtly developed story focuses on Inari, Inspector Chen's wife (and a demon) as she comes to terms with her own heritage and living on earth among humans. The characterization of this story has the depth and complexity that the canon unfortunately never quite achieves, and the relationship between Inari, Chen Wei, and Zhu Irzh builds plausibly but boldly on canon."



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/04/12--23:15: Sherlock 2x01 (chan 1930640)

I watched A Scandal in Belgravia and loved the first hour, before everything went horribly wrong. I don't like that they made Irene Adler an actual villain, and I'm still confused about what kind of villain she was--was she supposed to be some kind of jihadist sympathizer? Because that's just weird. And if she wasn't, if she really just did want protection, then why the fuck did she send the flight information to the terrorist cell? (ETA: Also, the fact that she loses to Sherlock, and because of her feelings for Sherlock, when in the original she fools him and goes off to be with the person she loves.)

Then there's the fact that the episode (a) presented Sherlock Holmes as the man who can make a self-professed gay woman fall in love with him, and (b) showed Sherlock returning her love, this in the same goddamn episode where it was sorta kinda canonically established that Sherlock and John have highly complicated feelings about each other. (Having said that, I did rather like the exchange between Irene and John about their mutual Sherlock-caused romantic and erotic confusion.)

The ending didn't make any damn sense (what, Sherlock just took a quick trip to Karachi--which, by the way, I think is possibly a little big and urban to be full of ninjas jihadis going around beheading people in public--infiltrated a terrorist group and fought them off with swords to save Irene? And no one noticed?) and generally kind of annoyed me.

I liked a lot in this ep, especially Mycroft and the hints of their childhood. And the Christmas party scene where Sherlock attempts, belatedly, to be nice. And Sherlock's bedsheet. But the Adler plot really was a hot mess, with too many attempts to be Sexy and Edgy.

Also, call me crazy, but I feel like the show is trying to win gay-positive cred by including lesbian characters (and not well, since the lesbians are either invisible, like Harry, or fall in love with Sherlock) but has neglected to feature a single non-villainous gay man. Yes, Sherlock has said some things that imply Mycroft is gay. But Mycroft is the Ice Man, even less likely to have sexual or romantic relationships, or feelings, than Sherlock, so I'm not sure I believe it. Conversely, Moriarty, although he claimed to have been just "playing" gay, is a walking gay stereotype.

The Sherlock/John relationship, while I do give the show some credit for showing it as intense and complicated (and I don't think it's just being played for laughs or as a tease) is probably never going to be made more definitely romantic than it already has been. *sigh*

And yet, despite all my objections, the show has re-hooked me even though I hated 1x02 and had mixed feelings about 1x03. Anybody read or written any good fic? By "good," I mean that it slashes Sherlock and John in an emotionally plausible way, or it explores Sherlock's personality interestingly, or it focuses on Mycroft-Sherlock relationship and what I suspect was the unbelievable weirdness of their childhood?



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/05/12--18:38: films (chan 1930640)

I saw Tintin a few days before Christmas but didn't get around to posting about it until now. I don't actually have a whole lot to say. It was fun! I was worried about the animation, which looks very weird in still photos/screencaps, but it worked beautifully in motion without any uncanny valley effect. The 3D was sometimes worthwhile and never terribly annoying. Jamie Bell's voicing of Tintin was charming; I was less enamored of the movie's Haddock than a lot of other folks, because I think he was played a little too much for broad comedy. There was moderate slashiness, but less so than the comics. One particularly telling moment for me was the scene where (mild spoiler) (skip) Haddock sets fire to the lifeboat. In the film, he does it because he's drunk and cold. This is true in the comics too, but there, his primary motivation is that he thinks Tintin is cold. By taking that out, the movie both makes Haddock looks more selfish and ridiculous than in the comics and downplays Haddock's immediate and intense devotion to Tintin. And in general the movie downplays how lonely and broken and depressed Haddock was before Tintin happened to him.

My main problem with the movie was that the action sequences just went on and on and bloody on, to the expense of coherency and character development. I was reminded a bit of the ending of Hot Fuzz (also directed by Edgar Wright), except that in that case there's a layer of parody. (ETA: Oops, Wright didn't direct this, he co-wrote it. Still, my main point stands, I think.)

So, it was enjoyable, but I haven't felt any particular urge to watch it again. I remain primarily a comicsverse fan.


In other movie news, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is finally going to open here this weekend, so I finally will get to see it. I'm looking forward to it, although I'm sure this is another case where I'll prefer the bookverse.

Before the Yuletide reveal I mentioned wanting to talk about something in my source that I'd noticed (I wrote TTSS bookverse fic). It was (not a major spoiler, but cut anyway) the scene where Bill Roach tells Jim Prideaux that someone's been asking where he lives. Jim tries to get a description out of him: "'Tall friend?' he asked softly. 'Sloppy tall kind of fellow, Jumbo? Eyebrows and a stoop? Thin feller?'"

Somehow, the first couple of times I read the book I managed to miss that this is a (rather laconic and Jim-esque) description of Bill. Jim thinks (hopes) Bill has come for him.

Realizing that absolutely broke my heart. TTSS is one of those books that finds a new way to devastate you every time you read it.



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01/07/12--18:42: works in progress and no longer in progress (chan 1930640)

Ah, today is the first of two glorious days off in a row! (My days off are frequently not consecutive.)

Besides sleeping, I've also written about 1000 words in a fandom that has, at most, two people in it. And I'm contemplating a fill at tintin_kinkmeme, where to my surprise there are several good stories and a number of prompts that make me want to write instead of tear my hair out.

Also, I have decided that today is Dead WIP Amnesty Day for me. So I'm going to post some fragments that are unfinished and will never be finished, but are not so terrible or so fragmentary that I want to consign them to hard-drive oblivion. These are first drafts, so read at your own risks of typos and other infelicities.


1. Unfinished Sanctuary story (Henry/Big Guy, teen, 5100 words, nothing sexually explicit). I started this during the mid-S3 hiatus, then it got jossed, then S4 of Sanctuary alienated me so much that I stopped watching and may not resume. Which is a shame, because I like how this one was going.



Dr. Helen gives him food three times every day, as much as he wants to eat.

She gives him clothes that are warmer than his old ones, even if they scratch. She gives him a bed to sleep in. She gives him toys--a cube of colored squares that move, which he likes, and a plush dog, which he pretends to like. At least it's better than real dogs--it doesn't bark at him or show its teeth.

She gives him a name, Henry Foss. The first part is hard to say, but he practices until he gets it right. He had a different name once, he thinks, but he doesn't remember it.

She gives him so much that he doesn't mind when she takes him far away to a city called London. In London, Dr. Helen and her friend Dr. James give him medicines that make him sleepy, and they attach wires to his forehead and his chest. Sometimes they stick needles into his arms and take his blood, but it doesn't hurt much. He doesn't mind the blood as much as the questions. Stupid questions. He's never seen anyone turn into an animal!

After twenty-one days--Henry likes to count, and he doesn’t know why Dr. Helen is so surprised--he says goodbye to Dr. James, and he goes with Dr. Helen into a big machine called an aeroplane. They're inside the aeroplane for almost ten hours. It's boring, but he plays with his cube while Dr. Helen writes things down in her notebook. That's her favorite game. Later he gets to see the inside of the cockpit and a man explains a lot about how aeroplanes work. He even gets to pull on a lever that makes the aeroplane fly higher.

Then he falls asleep for a while, and when he wakes up he's in a motorcar and Dr. Helen is telling him to put on his coat. When they get out of the motorcar, they're at the biggest house Henry has ever seen. A tall man lets them in the door. He's all covered with hair and he's got a funny face.

"Welcome to the Sanctuary, Henry," says Dr. Helen. "This is your new home."

That sounds all right. The house is warm inside, and there's probably lots of food, and Dr. Helen and the tall man can keep him safe from dogs and any other bad things.

"Would you like that?" Dr. Helen asks while he's thinking about it.

"Yes," Henry says. "Are you my new mummy, Dr. Helen?"

Dr. Helen looks sad and she turns her face away for a few seconds. "No, Henry. I'm afraid your mummy is gone. But I'll always be your friend."

He thinks he would have liked a new mummy. He can't remember much about his first mummy, but he likes how he feels when he thinks about her. Why is she gone?

He's crying, which is bad, it's too much noise. Dr. Helen pats his shoulder, but the tall man squats down and and puts his big hands softly on Henry's arms. It feels so nice that Henry runs up against him with a thump and holds on tight. The tall man hugs him in his long hairy arms. He's warm and it's much better than the stupid pretend dog. "I like how you smell," Henry says.

"Henry!" He knows from Dr. Helen's voice that he's said a bad thing. But the tall man doesn't push him away.

"It's all right," the tall man says. "I like how you smell, too, Henry." Then he and Dr. Helen start talking about smells, only they're using doctor words and Henry can't understand most of it.

"What's your name?" Henry asks the tall man. "Are you a doctor too?"

Instead of keeping on talking, the way Dr. Helen and Dr. James sometimes did when he asked questions, the tall man stops and answers him. "No, I'm not a doctor. And I can't tell you my name."

"Why not? Didn't Dr. Helen give you one?"

The tall man makes a funny sound. Henry's scared for a second, but the tall man ruffles his hair and Henry decides he must be laughing. "My name is a secret," he says. "But I have a friend who calls me the Big Guy."

"Really?" Dr. Helen says, and the Big Guy laughs again.

"He got tired of saying 'hey, you.'" He stands up and holds out a hand. Henry takes it. "Come on, Henry. I'll show you your room."



***

Erica doesn't want to be here in the clinic. She doesn't want to be here in Oldham, come to that. Yesterday she bought a copy of Time Out and spent more than an hour reading it, circling listings for everything in London--exhibits, plays, concerts, tours, lectures, restaurants--that sounded interesting. Almost all of it sounded interesting. She bought an A-Z, too, and in a spare moment this morning she looked up the train timetable online. She could be there already.

But she's the only one who knows the passwords for the clinic's recent files and the locations of the old, paper ones. She might have refused Declan McRae--although he looks the sort who'd lecture about responsibility, like poor auntie in a different key--but Henry assumed she'd help, and she didn't want to disappoint him. If he'd asked, she could have explained that her home's become a nightmare, a trap that smells to her imagination of old blood and tears. For him, it's a mystery and a revelation. He didn't ask.

So here she is, in a badly lighted cellar full of papers that are slowly succumbing to damp. Henry keeps sneezing and rubbing at his eyes, and he said something about dust being bad for his computers, but he stays here at the next desk. It almost makes up for being here at all.

In the sleepy midafternoon, when Erica's beginning to wonder if she can convince Henry to stop work at a reasonable hour so they can have a whole evening out together, she finds it. Or rather, she almost doesn't find it, doesn't notice it. It's just more genealogical charts, half-finished with a lot of question marks, but stapled to them is a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline Moorside Family Vanishes. It's from July 18, 1980. Police, it says, are "seriously concerned" about the disappearance of Brian Calvert, his wife Sheila, and their four-year-old son Steven. In the margins are notes in her aunt's clear handwriting: "prob. lycan, cf. GCM114 and GC," and "collectors? Cf. TR1978-2LC." The genealogical charts show Sheila's descent from a known lycan family and Brian's from a probable one. TR, Erica knows, is the Threat Report code; lycans have been endangered by outsiders as well as by--her aunt thought--their own natures. Brian and Sheila may well have ended up in a rich man's private menagerie. And the boy, well . . .

"Henry," she says. "You may want to see this."

He reads it--Erica can't help watching him, watching even his eyes as they track the words--and then reads it again. In a small voice, like the terrified little boy whom Erica sees in her mind, he says, "Oh, God."

She puts an arm around him, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"It was August," Henry says. "When the doc found me. August 11, 1980. She thought I was four or five. We . . . we always celebrated my birthday on August 11."

"You could find out your real birthday." Erica feels a fool for saying that, but somehow it brings Henry back to her. He shudders and hugs her tightly.

"I should remember them. But I . . . I think I can remember being hungry and scared. And really cold. But it's not . . . I could just be remembering a nightmare, I don't know."

"It's awful." Erica rubs his back. "All of it. I'm so sorry, Henry. But . . . at least now you can know something. You can know who you really are."

***

A sigh, a scrape of chair legs under a fidgeting body, a sound of turning pages as Henry counts how many are left, another sigh. A distracted part of Helen's mind starts a countdown, and she's only reached twenty-two when Henry says, "This is boring."

"It's not boring," Helen answers without looking up from the manual that purports to explain how transferring the Sanctuary accounts to the computer will make them much easier to manage. "It's Shakespeare."

"It's boring. Everybody talks funny. And if they're going to kill Caesar they should hurry up and do it."

"Be grateful I'm not making you read Caesar's own writing in the original Latin. I had to, when - "

"When I was your age," Henry finishes, mimicking her accent--his own is almost pure American now. "You're boring too."

Helen has made a good deal of accommodation for Henry's needs. She's scaled back her fieldwork and given over several hours a day of her own time, not to mention several of her assistant's, to teaching. She's tried to be modern, as well, giving the boy liberties that would have been unimaginable in her own childhood. But there are things she's not prepared to tolerate. "Manners, young man," she says. "I believe you owe me an apology."

Henry folds his arms over his chest, a little parody of adult decisiveness, and says, "No."

"Then you shall go to your room and stay there until suppertime. With your Shakespeare," she adds, quelling the smile Henry was trying to hide. "I'll expect a one-page report on acts four and five and a correct recitation of Mark Antony's funeral speech."

"You said I could help the Big Guy get the new phone lines set up. You promised!"

"That was before you decided to be rude."

"You promised! Liar!" Henry jumps up from his chair, knocking it over, and sweeps his books off the table. "You never let me do anything!"

"Henry!"

"I hate you!" The boy kicks a table leg, hard. If it hurts his foot--and it must, surely?-- he doesn't seem to notice. He kicks it again, and shoves at the table, which luckily is too heavy for him to overturn. "I hate your stupid books and I hate this place and I hate you!"

Is there a hint of growl in his voice? It's impossible to be sure. That's the trouble. It's impossible to know, and if they find out by chance, it may be too late. "Henry, go to your room." Helen fights to keep her own voice calm and authoritative, as she would with any aggressive creature. "Right now."

There's a knife-edge moment when she thinks he might not obey. But after all, he's still only a child, raised with affection and discipline. Henry lowers his eyes and goes. He even takes the book.

At dinner, his recitation is letter-perfect and his report is . . . well, he tried. "I'm sorry, Dr. Helen," he says.

"Apology accepted." Helen pats his shoulder, then gives in to an impulse and ruffles his hair. Children are supposed to be hugged and petted; all the modern psychology books agree on that. "But Henry, you must learn to control your temper. You know why."

Henry averts his face as he always does when his HAP status is mentioned. "I'm sorry."

"I know."

"May I be excused?"

He hasn't finished his sprouts, but this probably isn't the time to insist. "Yes. You may play on the Atari for an hour."

"Thanks."

"Henry," says her associate--she can't call him the Big Guy as Henry does--as the boy turns to leave. "Wait until I'm done in the kitchen. I'll play Pac-Man with you."

All Henry says is "okay," but his whole posture loosens with delight. Helen remembers something she tries to forget, because she's got no solution: Henry's not just a rare HAP and not just a sharp mind that needs training. He's a little boy who lives in a huge lonely house with people who aren't his parents and who never meets other children.

"That was kind of you," she says, when Henry has gone.

Her associate huffs impatiently. "No. Henry's a good player."

She looks at his face, which ought to be strange and has become so dearly familiar, and finally says out loud what she's been trying not to think. "I'm worried."

"Yes." He pours her a cup of tea, which she knows, as a doctor, she probably shouldn't be drinking.

"We can't know how he'll react." Helen catches herself laying a hand against her still-flat belly, and is embarrassed by her own melodrama. "Even fully human children can display aggression towards new siblings, and Henry - " Henry won't even be a blood relation.

Her associate says nothing, but Helen thinks he doesn't like where this is going.

"I think we have to start medicating him. The dose won't be high, and there's every reason to believe that it will keep his polymorphic abnormality in check."

The irritable huff she gets in response makes Helen brace herself for another quarrel about the meaning of normal, but the moment passes, and her associate says only, "How will Henry learn control if you don't give him the chance?"

"The chance to what? In any case, I'm not at all certain he wants to control his polymorphism. That would mean acknowledging that he's an abnormal. You've seen how he reacts whenever it's mentioned. Properly medicated, he may never have to face something he clearly finds painful."

"We've made him afraid of himself."

Helen sets aside her half-empty teacup. "That's a bit pat, isn't it? We've no way of knowing how damaged he already was when I found him. He was half-dead of cold and hunger, and terrified of people. Whatever brought him to that, it can't have been good."

Silence, again. Well. Helen would never have got anywhere in life if she hadn't learnt to carry on in the face of disapproval. "It's for everyone's safety," she says, hoping she sounds properly decisive. "When he's older, he can decide for himself if he wants to continue the medication. But there's too much at stake to risk it on the judgment and self-control of an eight-year-old."

Her associate sighs. "You're the boss," he says, and stands up to begin clearing away the dinner things.

***

Will comes back from the bar with two pints in his hands and a wistful grin on his face. "I think I'm going to miss this."

"Pretty sure you can buy beer even in old city."

"J.W. Lees Brewer's Dark?"

"Point. Maybe you could talk Declan into sending some at Christmas."

"Or Erica," Will says, with a different kind of grin.

As a question, it's pretty transparent. Henry wonders sometimes if Will is actually a really bad psychiatrist, or if he just pretends to be bad in order to get you off your guard. "I woudn't count on that. She can hardly wait to get out of Oldham. I guess she's been kind of cooped up here--she says she's never been farther away than Manchester."

"How long are you two going to be in London?"

"A week." Henry's sure he already told Will that, plus he e-mailed the doc to tell her what flight he'll be on once the week is up. "I'm gonna have history and culture coming out of my ears. But at least I talked her out of the Jack the Ripper walking tour."

"Henry, if you complain about having a week in London with a nice girl, I will have to pour this beer over your head. Which would be a sad waste of beer."

"Hey, no complaints here. Erica's great. I'm glad I met her."

Will takes a couple of slow, thoughtful drinks of beer. He looks . . . not exactly shifty, but like he's working up to something. Henry tries not to feel like he's waiting for Dr. Freud to pronounce. Will can't stop being a psychiatrist in his off-time, any more than Henry can stop being a computer geek. Or a HAP. "This is probably going to sound crazy - "

"Because our lives are completely normal in every way."

"Yeah, okay, but I don't mean that kind of stuff. It's, well. I kinda thought you and the Big Guy . . . "

"Oh, yeah. We are. I thought you knew." They don't exactly announce it, true, but they've never hidden it. Not even when it first started and the doc was less than thrilled. And Will was right there after the first time Henry transformed, when the Big Guy wrapped him up in a blanket and carried him to his room. Henry's mind wasn't exactly all there, but he remembers putting his arms around the Big Guy's neck and holding on tight, and how even though the fog of exhaustion and shame there was a little bit of happiness. He can half recall what the Big Guy said to him on the way, too, and some of it was kind of private even though Will was trailing along asking questions and worrying.

"I didn't. I mean, I wondered, but . . . wow." Will looks more embarrassed than Henry's seen him since a clip of his Kali dance turned up on YouTube. "That's - "

"A lot less weird than most of the other things in my life?" Or Will's life--he's not the newbie anymore, freaking out like it's his profession. The Sanctuary's grabbed him in its big, all-over, tentatcle-monster embrace.

Will laughs like he's had the same thought. "I was gonna say complicated, but, yeah. None of our love lives is straight out of Leave it to Beaver."

If they were a little more drunk Henry might ask whether he ever did the wild thing with [Sophie?] while she was invisible, and if they were a little more drunk than that, Will might even answer. If they were totally blasted, he might say a couple of the beaver jokes that have just occurred to him out loud.

While Henry's thinking about it, Will adds, "Does Erika know?" Because Will doesn't need even one drink to ask things.

Henry shakes his head. At first he didn't tell her because it wasn't anything she needed to know. Now . . . now maybe she should know, but the best time to tell her has already gone by, somehow. She'll think he lied, which isn't exactly the case, and he doesn't want to hurt her. "Nah. It's . . . I'll be going home pretty soon anyway."

Will's got his poker face on. It might not be a million-dollar-prize winning poker face, but it'd do pretty well at a friendly game. "Erika likes you a lot," he says.

I like her a lot, Henry thinks, but this has already turned into a conversation he doesn't especially want to have. "I told the Big Guy," he says instead. "I'm not, like, asking you to lie for me or not mention her or anything."

Maybe he overestimated Will's poker face. It's not hard to see the total war happening between curiosity and manners. Curiosity wins. Probably it always does; that's how Will ended up in the Sanctuary. "So he's okay with it?"

"Yeah. It's no big deal. Sometimes I meet a girl, or a guy." Not that Henry's Casanova, or even Jack Harkness, but, well, stuff happens. They hadn't been together long when Henry went away to college, and even computer geeks get lucky sometimes. Somehow the arrangement happened, too, without them ever exactly talking about it. Henry doesn't mess around as much these days, especially not with guys, because even though Biggie doesn't say anything, Henry has the feeling that it does bug him a little when Henry hooks up with another guy. Erika's the first time in a couple of years, actually. "We're good, me and him."

"What about the Big Guy? Does he . . . ?"

Henry catches himself laughing. The thought of the Big Guy with someone else is just . . . ridiculous. "No. I mean, he could, I guess, but he doesn't." That's not how it works. How it works is that Henry fools around a little, sometimes, and then he comes home and his life goes on like always. It's like going on vacation--fun, but not real.

"But if - "

"Hey!" Henry says. "It's my round. Same again, or did you want to try the Supernova this time?"

"Supernova, I guess. Might as well try everything," Will says, with a meaningful grin that Henry ignores. All this talking has spun his head round and made simple things seem complicated. But it'll all sort itself out next week when he goes home.

***

Helen Magnus is a lot prettier than he'd have imagined from her phone manner. The suit's a little mannish, or the jacket is anyway, but the tight straight skirt shows off long slim legs in black nylons, and she's not the type who thinks heels are an affront to women's lib.

He stands, and she doesn't take umbrage at that either. Maybe this'll go better than he imagined. "Mrs. Magnus, it's a pleasure to meet you. Bill Dupre." Half the parents he meets manage to forget his name between the phone call and the meeting, which explains a lot about why their kids screw up.

"Dr. Magnus, thank you, Mr. Dupre." She takes his offered hand and shakes it in a grip like a man's. Bill's hopes are dissipating. He doesn't offer her coffee, even though the percolator's just finished brewing a fresh pot.

"Okay, Dr. Magnus. Well, let's talk about the problems Henry's been having."

"Actually, Mr. Dupre, I'd prefer to talk about why you and this school are allowing Henry to be bullied."

"Now, let's not exag- "

"Faggot," Dr. Magnus says coolly.

"What?"

She produces a list from her purse. "'Faggot' is the name some boys called him. Not to mention 'fairy,' 'freak,' 'lameass,' 'nerd,' 'shit-for-brains,' 'weirdo,' and 'whiner.' And 'girl,' although I dislike treating that as a term of abuse." Neatly, she folds the list and puts it away. "Mr. Dupre, would you allow your colleagues to speak to you like that?"

"Dr. Magnus, you have to understand that boys - "

"I don't think you would allow it, Mr. Dupre. I think you'd report the matter to your superiors and you'd expect them to intervene. Which is exactly what Henry did. He's asked his teachers for help more than once, and nothing's been done."

"You can't expect us to police every word out of our students' mouths!"

"Yesterday Henry came home with a black eye. It wasn't the first time he'd been injured, merely the first time he couldn't hide it from me."

"Dr. Magnus, I'm sorry that this is happening." Her posture--back stiff, knees together, head up like she's queen of the universe or Nancy goddamn Reagan or somebody--doesn't change, but at least she shuts up. "Henry was homeschool until this year, is that right?"

"Yes. I'd have preferred to keep doing so, but I don't have the necessary expertise in engineering or computers. I thought this school would suit him, with its reputation in science."

Most parents are less subtle when they threaten to pull their brats out. Bill could almost admire the bitch. "Well, you certainly did a great job with his education. He's one of the most brilliant students we've ever had." It's true, but he'd say it anyway, because Helen Magnus needs to be buttered up until she shines. A lot of the students come from wealthy families, but Magnus could donate a whole new campus if she wanted to. "But he's . . . underdeveloped, socially." Bill can do subtle too.

Amazingly, Magnus nods. "He hasn't had a lot of exposure to other children. I don't doubt that he's a bit awkward."

Bill thinks of the kid, who can name all the presidents of the United States and all the monarchs of England (in order, with dates), who talks about Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA like he was there (and who insisted to his biology teacher that some lab assistant named Rosalind Franklin deserved most of the credit), who's somehow taught himself a bucketload of C++, but who's never watched a football game. Who ate nothing but chocolate chip cookies his first week at school because he'd never had them before. Who, when Miss Salazar quoted a Shakespeare sonnet to demonstrate metaphor, told her that she shouldn't say Shakespeare was comparing his girlfriend to a summer's day because everyone knew Shakespeare had written that poem about a man. Bill thinks about telling Helen Magnus this story, but if she doesn't know yet that the kid's a pansy, he doesn't want to break the news. "It'll all get better once he learns to fit in."

Oops. Something in Magnus's face gets . . . Bill thinks dangerous, but that doesn't even make any sense. "Mr. Dupre, I acknowledge that Henry needs to refine his social skills. But that doesn't excuse the bullying."

"Mrs. Magnus, you're - " He stops himself before he says overreacting. "Understandably concerned. But I think you're misunderstanding normal boyish behavior. Boys are a little rough, a little aggressive. It's what they're like. I can see how it might seem pretty bad to a woman."

"I take a somewhat less cheerful view of male aggression."

Great, now it's back to feminism. "Dr. Magnus, I notice that you're the only guardian listed in Henry's file."

She nods and crosses her ankles. Bill specifically chose the visitor chairs in his office to be a little uncomfortable, but she sits like somehow who enjoys a high back and a wooden seat.

"Well, the lack of a male role model may be holding Henry back a little. Nothing that he can't recover from, of course, but it's important for him to spend some time in a more balanced environment."

There's a twitch in her face that Bill could swear was a suppressed smile, although not a very nice one. "Yes, your teaching staff is almost 80% male, and 72% of your students are male. That's remarkably balanced."

Bill leans forward and manages a glance at the clock on the corner of his desk. He's got another meeting in ten minutes, thank God.

"In any case," Magnus continues, "Henry has a 'male role model,' if we must use such a phrase. Someone who teaches him that there's nothing manly about cruelty and violence."

Bill lets himself wonder who she means. A boyfriend she's managed to snag for a while before he figures out that she's a ball-buster? No, more likely some fag friend of hers. Women like her always have a few. "Dr. Magnus, I'm glad we've had this talk."

She laughs, and it actually makes her beautiful again for a minute. "Are you? Well, since you're clearly eager for it to be over, let's move swiftly to the conclusion. This bullying of Henry will stop, Mr. Dupre. It will stop immediately, or I'll ensure that every parent who has a child in this school, or is considering placing a child here, knows that the staff is unable to control students' behavior. Then, once the school's reputation has collapsed, I'll hire away the more qualified staff to tutor Henry privately."

She stands up--like a soldier, Bill thinks--and walks out, the small slit in the back of her skirt offering a glimpse of thigh that Bill's unable to enjoy. He picks up the phone to his secretary. "Emergency faculty meeting this afternoon," he says. "Mandatory attendance. Make sure they all know that."

It's not going to be a good day.

***

When Henry arrives, which will be soon, he's bound to be tired and hungry. Airplanes are an awful way to travel. The Big Guy knows the scientific reasons--low humidity, insufficient oxygen, overcrowding, air recirculation that maximizes exposure to bacteria and viruses. There are other reasons too, unprovable but that he knows in his bones to be true. Humans are earth creatures, like his own people, and it's not good to be so far away from their place.

If one of the Big Guy's people traveled, which wasn't very often, when she came home she'd dig earthworms and eat them, and then sleep at the center of the camp with all the people around her. That would hold her together, like mud cementing a twig wall, and call home any stray bits of her spirit that had gotten lost along the way. Those aren't human customs, of course, but the Big Guy has a meal planned for Henry, grounding sorts of food (no fish, no birds) with herbs from the Sanctuary's tiny garden. He's dusted Henry's bedroom and transplanted some lupines into a pot on the dresser; he'll put them back in the sun after a couple of days, once they've done their work.

The scientific part of his mind thinks that nutrition and rest certainly won't do Henry any harm.

Once everything's ready, the Big Guy works on the medical inventory. Impatience doesn't make the thing you want come any faster. His mother used to take him fishing at the wrong time of day, on purpose, to teach him that. He can't deny, though, that he's a little distracted, and he sets the checklist aside the second Henry's car comes through the gates, even though there are only four items left on it and he could easily have finished.

"Hey, man," Henry says when the Big Guy meets him in the entry hall. The Big Guy doesn't bother with words, just pulls him--bags and all--into a long hug. That's as close as he can get to the sniffing and grooming of a proper greeting without making even Henry a little uncomfortable. Henry smells of coffee (lots of it), beer, corn chips, breath mints, sweat, a new hair gel, the gasoline and plastic and stale air of travel, and, faintly, of a flowery perfume that must be Erika's. After a few seconds Henry pulls away and stands grinning awkwardly. "I totally reek, sorry."

Henry knows better than that. "Come and eat."

"Soon as I put my stuff away. And take a shower."

Maybe he doesn't want to bother the others. Will and Kate grew up in an entirely human world, and now that they live here, things are a little different than they used to be.

Twenty minutes later Henry turns up in the kitchen, wet-haired and wearing clean clothes. He's put on fresh deodorant, too. The Big Guy wishes he'd remembered to ask him not to. "Pork chops!" Henry says, sniffing the air. "You're awesome, you know that? They hardly fed us on the plane. Flying commercial probably breaks a bunch of Geneva conventions. And I'm gonna tell the doc so the next time she gets all regulationy about personal trips and the cost of jet fuel."



And that's all there is. Here's where it was going: there was going to be a growing estrangement between Henry and the Big Guy, fuelled partly by Henry's unadmitted desire for a "normal" life and the world outside the Sanctuary and partly by Henry's guilt at not having told Erica about his relationship with the Big Guy. (This was my explanation for the episode where the Big Guy gets shot and when he wakes up, Henry's not there, he's Skyping with Erica instead.) When Henry gets back after the Hollow Earth trip, the Big Guy is gone, leaving a note saying he doesn't want to get in the way of what Henry really. Whereupon Henry realizes what he really wants is the Big Guy and their life at the Sanctuary. So he tracks down the Big Guy to the Pacific Northwest forests, they have a big argument and are reconciled and live happily ever after. This would have been interspersed with flashback scenes about Henry's teenage years and discovery of his own sexuality, the start of his relationship with the Big Guy, and how the relationship survived Henry going away to college. The whole fic would have been about the desire to leave and conquer the world vs. the desire to be and stay at home, and the not entirely non-emotionally-incestuous ways the Big Guy represents home for Henry.



2. James May/Paul McDermott RPS (with implied unrequited James/Richard and previous Paul/Tim Ferguson), 1200 words, nothing sexually explicit. Top Gear is another fandom I think I'm done with, although I do have the urge sometimes to write about James May with non-TG men (e.g. Sim Oakley, Oz Clarke, or in this case Paul McDermott, formerly of DAAS fame).



"I don't know why you bother," Clarkson says as James pulls out the folder of material that Good News Week sent him.

"Because I thought it might be useful to know something about the show we're taping tomorrow."

"What's there to know? It's Australian. They'll all be seven feet tall, sunburnt, and named Bruce."

James looks over to where the local crew, very few of whom are named Bruce, are setting up the day's last shot: their triumphant arrival at Bondi Beach. They actually got to Sydney yesterday, but they missed the light. "Is there anything you know about Australia that didn't come from old Monty Python episodes?"

"I'll bet you a million pounds that I'm right."

James opens the folder and squints against the glare. "Luckily for you, I'm too kind to take you up on that. The host is, in fact, named Paul. Paul McDermott." The photo shows a sweet-faced man, like an aging cherub. He doesn't look sunburnt.

"McDermott?"

"Mmm."

"That's . . . I know that name from somewhere." Jeremy's face scrunches up. "Damn. It's gone. I'll probably remember in the middle of the night. Like a song title."

"Don't ring and tell me, will you?" Past the crew, Richard is walking along the edge of the surf. He's barefoot, with his trousers rolled up so they won't get wet and ruin continuity. Richard's not sunburnt either, but lightly tanned, with the ends of his hair going blond; in this perfect afternoon light he's all variegated gold. James looks away. "It's probably someone else, anyway."

"What's your bumf say, then?" Jeremy asks, with the insouciant curiosity of someone who's lost his own copy. "Is Bruce going to ask us about cars?"

"Shouldn't think so. Says here it's a news quiz."

"Australian news? All rugger and lager, I expect. And the price of sheep."

"Price of a sheep for what?" Richard asks, having come up while James wasn't looking at him.

Luckily, the cameras are ready, and Andy's calling them over before Jeremy can answer.

***

That night, insomniac at a quarter past one in the morning, James googles Paul McDermott. The man used to be a comedian, it seems. Quite a well-known one locally. There are links to YouTube videos.

A few minutes later, James watches in stifled laughter and not-quite-stifled horror as the same sweet-faced man, younger and slighter, short and unwashed-looking, sings a catchy song about . . . fucking dogs. There's a guitarist, and another man who sings along, excellent harmonies and even a little dance that just about mimes the act of buggering a dachshund. McDermott's voice is a lovely, flexible tenor; the song wouldn't be half so funny, or shocking, if he didn't sound like the devil's own choirboy.

James tries to imagine this man as the host of a televion programme, and fails. This although he's become used to the idea of Jeremy Clarkson in the same role.

What the hell has Wilman got them into this time?

***

The Good News Week green room is positively sybaritic compared to Top Gear's. It has deep carpet that no one's walked on in muddy wellies, unscuffed furniture with plump cushions, a selection of up-to-date magazines, three kinds of coffee (espresso, percolator, and cafetière) and an excellent selection of teas, plus a whole supermarket's worth of biscuits, including those malty Australian ones James finds it increasingly hard to resist. Working in commercial television, even antipodean commercial television, is clearly another world. If Fifth Gear ever comes knocking, James thinks he might be tempted for at least half an hour.

The green room also, inexplicably, has a piano, a handsome Yamaha grand. James glances over at Jeremy, who's pecking away at his laptop and occasionally muttering to himself. Of course Jeremy isn't nervous; he's a veteran of QI and a million other panel shows, while James has never learnt to be comfortable on television unless he's got a script to rely on, or at least editors he can trust not to want to make him look a fool. A sickly flutter in his stomach tells James he should have refused, like Richard did. Richard's on an aeroplane right now, going home, and James could have been there with him if he'd just held firm when Wilman said that Channel Ten was insisting on at least two Top Gear presenters. Going home would be nice. Spending a long flight with Richard, sitting and talking or swopping mp3 players to mock each other's musical taste or just dozing off in the strange, half-comfortable proximity that aeroplanes enforce . . . that would be nice too.

James sits hesitantly on the piano bench and opens the lid. It's a well-kept instrument, free of dust. He touches a few keys, hears a warm true tone that's the musical equivalent of a come-hither look, and (after another glance at Jeremy, oblivious in a writer's daze) loosens his fingers up with a bit of [?]. Then one of Satie's Gymnopédies, but it's too spare for his anxious mood and he's forgotten bits of it, so he slips into Debussy and manages to lose himself for a while.

When he stops, there's a man standing by the piano. Short, middle-aged, a little plump, in a flattering suit and what James assumes is a stylish haircut, and although he's twenty years older he's got the same sweet face as the filthy anarchist who sang about dog abuse. "You're very good," he says, and smiles.

James slaps the piano lid closed, nearly catching a finger. "I'm not, actually. I hardly ever practise, I just muck about."

"Well, you're a lot better than me. If I'd known we could've had you play one of the musical clues or something."

"Christ, no. I-" James has played on television before, but not seriously, not as though he's an actual musician. "Er, I'm James May. Hullo."

"Paul McDermott. Are - "

"My God," Jeremy bellows from the sofa; James had half forgotten he was there. "I thought your name sounded familiar." He lurches to his feet, awkward the way he is when his back's hurting, and thrusts out a hand. "The Doug Anthony All Stars! I saw you in Edinburgh, must have been, hell, 1990 or so. You were absolutely raving mad." He's been shaking McDermott's hand throughout this speech, and finally lets it go with a squeeze that looks painful to James. "And brilliant. I'd no idea you were - "

"Still around?" McDermott suggests. "Yeah, we're still clinging on to celebrity like overfed leeches. Richard's doing radio now, and Tim . . . " There's a hesitation, and before McDermott can find words, the door opens and the green room is suddenly full of people and loud with multiple introductions at once. James meets team captains Mikey and Claire and his fellow guests, a dark-haired woman of about his own age called Fiona and a camp blond boy whose name James doesn't catch. They both seem perfectly comfortable, chatting away with the hosts as though they're all old friends. Australia, James remembers, has only about a third of the UK's population; Australian television must be quite a small world.


Where it was going: Paul and James bond via their mutual interest in music. After the show, James learns Paul doesn't drive and offers to teach him; Paul accepts. The next day there's a driving lesson way out in the middle of nowhere, and lots of talk, and revelations about their mutual bisexuality and mutual love for men they can't have. They go back to Sydney and James spends the night with Paul. (The story doesn't ignore Paul's real-life relationship and child, just assumes he and his partner aren't monogamous and that Paul has a pied-à-terre for painting and liaisons.) The next day they say goodbye, both feeling that they might have loved each other if things were different, but things aren't different and at least they've had a nice time.



More dead WIPs coming in a second post. This one can't get any longer if I'm to crosspost it to LJ successfully.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/07/12--19:10: more dead WIPs (chan 1930640)

(Follow up from my last post.)

3. Paul McDermott/Tim Ferguson RPS (6700 words, not sexually explicit). I'm still attached to this fandom, but the unfinished part of the story was just too big and complicated, and I lost momentum. Do try to forgive the mawkishness of the ring scene at the very beginning (I'd have rewritten it to be less so), as some of what comes later, I rather like. Tim really did used to wear a claddagh ring (you can see it in Dead and Alive) and Paul at the same time was wearing a ring that looked similar but not identical.



Tim likes souvenirs. Paul takes the piss, naturally, so Tim's learned not to buy them when Paul's around, not that this stops Paul from noticing when Tim's luggage has grown an extra suitcase, opening it up, and getting sarcastic about whatever he finds inside.

Here in Ireland, during the day and half Tim's managed to make for himself by getting on a train right after a show and not arriving back in London until two hours before the next, Tim has bought a Waterford vase for his mum, a handknitted wooly jumper for his dad, a picture book of Irish fairy tales for his son, and a gold necklace for his wife. And now, for himself, this.

Claddagh rings are very traditional, the shopgirl assures him, which Tim reckons means every tourist buys one. But it looks good on his finger, and whenever he looks at it he'll remember the narrow grey Liffey and the taste of Guinness, which every barman in Dublin insists loses its goodness with travelling.

"And what size does your sweetheart take?" the girl asks.

"Sorry?"

"Will you be buying one for your girl? It makes a grand gift. Especially in gold."

"No, thanks. Just this one." Which is silver.

Disappointment at the lost sale crosses the girl's face, soon replaced by something more hopeful. "Well, if you're not got a sweetheart, you wear it like this, with the heart pointing away from you." Her fingers are warm and unhurried on his as she turns the ring around.

Once he's out of the shop, he turns it around again.

***

It's nearly a day before Paul notices. Or rather, it's nearly a day before Paul says anything. Tim's sure Paul noticed it right away, because he notices every bloody thing. But he holds off comment until the next afternoon, when Tim's in his hotel room trying to write something, anything, that isn't a fucking comic song.

Paul knocks. This is an advantage of hotel rooms over the very old days when they shared a house--Paul has to knock. But Paul still doesn't take no for an answer, or he doesn't recognize "I'm writing" as polite for "you can't come in." And Tim tries to be polite these days, because he's got a wife and a little boy and he can't let himself keep the habit of saying "fuck off" whenever he's mildly inconvenienced.

He doodles in his notebook for a while, badly, because his arm is all pins-and-needles again, as Paul stalks twitchily around. Coke, Tim thinks, although these days it's not always easy to tell when Paul is coked up and when he's just nerved up. Paul's hands stroke random things--the nailheads on a leather armchair, the fake velvet draperies, Tim's notebook (which he seizes, barely glances at, and carries around), the surface of a reproduction Millais, his own greasy hair. He stinks. He seldom bothers showering: "It'll hardly matter once I put the fucking uniform on, will it?" he says.

"I want to go out," he announces now.

"All right." Tim rescues his notebook and tries to find his page.

"I want us to go out."

"I don't want to go out."

"Aww, c'mon, granddad, it's good for you. We'll go to the park and meet some other geriatrics. You'll love it."

"Fuck off," Tim says. "Go with Richard."

"Richard's gone to the fucking V and A to look at their world-class collection of chamberpots or some fucking thing. As I don't have his consuming interest in shit vessels, it narrows my options down to you. Nice ring, by the way. Did you buy a matching one for the little woman?"

"Fine," Tim says, because Paul has played his trump and Tim has lost again. "We'll go out."

Paul's need to wander lasts as far as a pub three streets from the hotel, where he orders double whiskies for himself and tries to order them for Tim, too, but Tim has a word with the barman and gets Guinness instead. It tastes a little bitterer than the Guinness in Dublin, but that might just be the company. When Paul has downed his fourth whisky in fifteen minutes and is signalling for another, Tim says, "We've got to be at the theatre in -" His new gold watch, which Paul has threatened to smash, tells him it's almost four o'clock. "- just over three hours."

"We've gone on drunk before."

"Moderately pissed, yeah. Legless, no."

"There was that time in [small Australian town]."

"And repeating that's exactly what I want to do. Jesus. Do you remember that huge skinhead bastard with the -"

"That was not your cue to get nostalgic, Ferguson. Christ, when did you turn sixty? And how do I turn you back?" Paul swipes viciously at his hair. Tim hasn't had the heart to say how little it suits him, but he thinks Paul knows. The ugliness is the point. The ugliness, the stink, the crudity and cruelty that used to be an act he could stop. It's all wrapped a foot thick around little Paul McDermott like a rubber costume. Something out of Doctor Who: Ice Warrior Paul McDermott, terrifying monster, conqueror of worlds.

"I just don't want to be stupid anymore," Tim says, knowing how it'll sound to Paul.

"You used up all your stupidity, didn't you? Mister I Got Married Just As My Career Was Taking Off."

"Fuck you." Which makes Paul grin, one of those adorable little smiles he loves to come out with onstage whenever he's made an especially sick joke. "Really. Fuck you."

"But I thought we didn't do that anymore, Timmy."

"Christ. I'm going back to the hotel." Tim doesn't make it to the door before Paul catches up with him. And grabs his arm, then sneakily slides his hand down until he's holding Tim's. On [street], in broad daylight, and luckily they're not famous enough yet that paparazzi follow them around. Tim yanks his hand away.

"You're hurting my feelings, darling."

"Good."

"Well, fuck me," Paul says, planting himself in front of a shop window. "Look at all this treasure! It's enough to make a girl's head spin." It's a jeweller's; diamonds sparkle in the feeble English sunlight. "Let's go in."

"I'm going back to the hotel," Tim says again, because he means it. Even though his feet aren't moving. "You do whatever the fuck you want, so long as you leave me alone."

"I want to go into the shop." Paul grins more widely, more nastily. "And if I have to do it on my tod, I might lose all track of time and forget to turn up for the show."

"You utter prick," Tim says to Paul's back, which disappears behind the closing shop door. "I hate you." And then he follows.

Paul is leaning over a glass counter, smiling at a very handsome man in a grey suit and a significantly pink tie. " - just like--oh there you are, Timmy--just like his. Show the man your pretty ring, Timmy. Oh, just the one on your hand, my blushing boy." Fast as a snake, he's got Tim's right wrist and drags it up under the man's nose.

"I'm very sorry." The man looks confused in a way Tim recognises, caught between the smooth charm and the sharp edge, and not sure which is real. Paul has always made people's heads spin, even before he added not showering to his repertoire of social skills. "We don't carry this, er, style."

Translation: don't come in here for tourist junk, you philistine, and have you noticed this isn't Ireland? So Tim's not entirely angry when Paul says, "What fucking use are you, then?"

"Really, sir," the man says, in a voice that suggests he's recategorised Paul from "drunk who might spend money" to "drunk who might smash the shop."

"Really," Paul says, in a mushy Pom accent like he's got a mouth full of Prince Charles's shit, "It's terribly, terribly important that I find a matching ring." He waves Tim's hand around a bit.

"I see," the Handsome Jeweller says hesitantly, making a fatal mistake. Never give Paul an inch, because that's all the wriggly bastard needs.

"Don't you want to know why?"

Tim tugs against Paul's grip, uselessly, because he's not actually willing to have a fight here but Paul has no such inhibition. "That's enough, Paul, let's -"

"We're getting married," Paul confides to the Handsome Jeweller, and giggles. "First poof wedding in Australia. Elton John's going to be maid of honour. And k. d. lang's my best man. I'm the husband, of course. Don't blush, Timmy, sweetheart. You'd never think he was shy if you could see him with my cock up his arse."

The Handsome Jeweller says, "Sir -" and Tim says "Paul -" but Paul pulls a wad of twenty-pound notes from his trouser pocket. A packet of white powder tumbles to the tasteful carpet; Paul, for once, doesn't notice, and Tim doesn't tell him.

"I've got about four hundred quid, I think," Paul says. "And wouldn't it be tragic if I had to go the press and tell them you wouldn't serve us because we're queer?" He smiles, and although he's puffy around the jowls and skeletal around the eyes, he's beautiful. Tim wants to break his fingers, and then possibly his nose. "Now, get me a ring like his."

"We don't carry claddagh rings. Really."

"Like his. Doesn't have to be perfect. It's only a poof wedding, after all. Not the true holy sacrament between a real man and his real wife."

"We don't carry silver," the Handsome Jeweller says, and Tim isn't sure if the brightness in his eyes is greed or a desperate prayer that he can sell Paul something and get rid of him. "But we do have platinum."

"Fair dinkum," Paul says in broadest bogan, but it's wasted on an Englishman, and anyway the man's bent to pull a tray out of the case. "May your chooks turn into emus, mate."

"Er, thank you."

For the first time all day Tim wants to laugh, but he's buggered--by a Great fucking Dane without lube--if he'll give Paul the satisfaction.

Paul tries on about thirty rings, finally goes back to the first one he tried, which has a vaguely claddagh-ish oval face, and to Tim's amazement actually buys it. It costs three hundred and sixty pounds. Tim's claddagh ring cost eighteen pounds, Irish. "Do you want to put it on my finger now, love, or do you want to be a good boy and wait for our special day?"

"For Christ's sake, give it a rest." Tim shoves the ring onto Paul's outstretched ring finger--left hand, of course.

"Slow down, you're hurting me!" He grins at Tim like he actually expects Tim to find this funny. "But I always love the feel of your ring."

Then, thank Christ or more likely, considering this is Paul, thank Satan, they can leave the shop.

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty," Paul sings, with that iron grip on Tim's hand again. He tries to skip, but Tim plants his feet hard and thinks immovable-object thoughts. Yanked back like a dog on a leash, Paul says, "What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"Are you finished? Have you had your fun? Because I'm tired, Paul." Maybe Paul's right and he is getting old. Maybe this is Dorian Gray and he's the portrait, rotting away while Paul will go on forever.

Paul looks at him puzzlingly, as though Tim is unexpected and faint, a distant radio signal three-quarters drowned with static. For a good two seconds, before his face goes cold again, he listens. "Headache, darling? Oh, well, at least it was good for me."

That's the last word out of him, and he manages to walk at Tim's side all the way back to the hotel without looking at him once. It's meant as more punishment, but it frees up the space in Tim's brain that's usually taken up Coping With Paul, and lets him think.

When Paul turns towards his room, opposite Tim's, Tim touches his arm. Doesn't grab it or pull on it, just lays his hand on the cheap leather of the jacket Paul's had since before they met. Paul stops dead. "Come and talk to me," Tim says.

"You're no fun anymore."

"Paul." Tim opens his door and Paul follows him, meek as a lamb. Whisky and comedown, Tim thinks, not regret. Not that it matters. Tim is going to be reasonable enough for two. "Somehow I get the impression you're angry at me."

Paul shrugs and folds himself into the armchair, knees drawn tight to his chest. He shrugs.

"We could talk about it." Minibar, yes. Two tiny vodkas that between them cost as much as a real bottle at an off-license (but Tim can afford it now), a splash of tonic. A civilised, reasonable, mature gesture.

"We talked about it three years ago," Paul says, accepting the drink without looking at it. "And much fucking good it did."

"Christ, you could hold a grudge for Australia."

"A grudge? Is that what you call it? No, mate. If this was about the fifty fucking dollars you never paid me for that microphone - "

" - I bloody well did, I took it out of the money my gran sent me for - "

"If this was about the fifty fucking dollars, it'd be a grudge. It's be stupid. But you left me. And if you're waiting for me to stop being angry, the devil's got a pair of fucking ice skates all ready for you."

Tim gulps his drink in one swallow and wishes his legs weren't all strange and lead-y, so he could curl up in his own armour like Paul.

"You didn't want anything serious, you said. You always said. You wanted to get rich and famous and fuck everything worth fucking on all seven continents including Antarctica, which by the way you did - "

"And so did you. And then you met that bitch and you fell in fucking loooooooove and you got her up the spout and you married her!"

"I love my wife," Tim says. It's completely true. Completely simple, just like the Bible stories he was taught as a kid. Simple because it leaves out all the tricky bits.

"I know. That't what shits me." Paul sighs. And then he launches himself at Tim like a cross between a ballistic missile and a ninja. Kisses him, whisky taste and clumsy tongue, and Paul's never really been anything like the world's best kisser but he's the world's Paul McDermott-est kisser and Christ, it's been three years.

Tim lets it go on for too long, and when he pulls away--barely, he can still feel Paul's breath on his face, and the world's so upside-down that the distillery reek makes Tim's mouth go wet with longing--he finds himself saying, "It was nothing to do with her. The ring. I only bought one."

"I know."

Fucker. "Then why - "

"I didn't know until thirty seconds ago."

"Oh," Tim says, and he knows from some near-invisible shift in Paul's face that Paul is about to kiss him again. Two roads are diverging in the bloody yellow wood. It's all real, the whole shit poem he had to memorize in year nine, every true word of it rings in his head. He's one traveller, with promises to keep.

Anyway, the other road is signposted with beware as far as the eye can see. Slippery road, falling rocks, look out for kangaroos and crocodiles and probably jellyfish as well.

Tim slides away, putting a feeble couple of inches between him and Paul before he's blocked by the back of the sofa. "You'd better go, Paul."

"Yeah. I know that too." He straightens up and smiles like the surface of the moon. "Fucking Madame Blavatsky, that's me."


1994

Usually there's a high after a show, a wave of energy to ride for a while before crashing into letdown. Tonight, there's just the letdown. It set in before the show even started, maybe. They were a bit shithouse, Tim knows, off key and off timing, though the audience screamed and clapped just the same.

Tim sits with his jacket in his lap, wiping the last of the makeup off his face. His hair's dripping sweat and beer down his neck, which is a feeling he's always hated, but tonight everything, every stinking thing, makes him thing this is it, this is the last time.

The worst of it is, he feels tip-top, physically. He's been fine through almost all of this tour, just a little weakness in one leg when they played [Perth]. Maybe he'll keep on being fine and there was no need for any of it.

Four thumps sound hollowly from the cheap door. "Come in, Paul," he says. He knows Paul's knock--Richard's is quiet and civilised--but he'd have known anyway. It has to be Paul. Paul is, right now, inevitable. Paul's been ticking all day, and now the clock's at zero and it's time for the mushroom cloud.

Paul comes in, leans against the door, and doesn't explode. "Well," he says. "That's it."

"That was it."

Still no explosion. Not even a blink at the past tense that was out of Tim's mouth before he noticed. Goodnight, Sydney, Tim thinks. We were the Doug Anthony All Stars.

Paul rubs his sleeve across his forehead, coating the cloth a runny pinkish-brown. Usually he only damages his costume in ways he's planned in advance. But then . . . "Give me your jacket."

"Why?" Tim's fingers close around the collar, which is frankly a rather disgusting sensation, but it's all he can do not to wrap his arms round the thing like it's his baby and Paul's a dingo.

"I'm gonna burn the fucker. All of them." Stripping of his own jacket, Paul mimes petrol, a match, and flames. Tim can't remember if he always used to gesture so much, or if it comes of ten years performing.

"But the paintings - "

"Fuck 'em." Paul extends a commanding arm.

"No. You can't just - you'll wish you hadn't."

"I want to burn them," Paul says, enunciating like a Play School host. "I might put a stake through them first, right here." Hand on heart. "Bury the ashes at a crossroads at midnight. Now hand the bastard over"

Holding his jacket tightly, Tim slides past Paul, opens the door, and shouts down the corridor for Richard. When he appears a minute later, Richard is showered and changed, smelling of toothpaste and cologne instead of years of accumulated sweat. He really is amazingly sane. He's the only reason the All Stars lasted longer than six weeks.

He's also, at the moment, irritated. "What? I'm not a fucking referee."

"Take our jackets," Tim says.

"Have you got biohazard containers? And I might need a license."

"I'm not joking." Tim hands his jacket over; Richard holds it by the shell casings on the epaulette. "Paul wants to burn them."

Richard almost asks why--Tim sees it in his face--then shrugs in his resigned, Richard-y way. "Why don't you take them, then? If you're so bloody determined to preserve them for future historians of comedy."

Tim looks at Paul, who's running his fingers over the badges and safety pins in his jacket. His filthy dreadlocks hang in his eyes.

"Because I might burn them too," Tim says. He takes the jacket from the unresisting Paul and passes it to Richard.

"Christ." Richard looks at Paul, looks at him, and sighs. "I wish you two would sort yourselves out." He retreats back to his dressing room--with relief, Tim suspects. For all breaking up the group was Tim's idea, it was Richard who made it final when about five hours into the screaming row he said, "It's stopped being fun." Even Paul couldn't answer that.

And now Paul's quiet again, closing the door with himself still on the inside. After a couple of those weird arrhythmic stillnesses that happen when someone's about to speak but decides against it, he says, "Our little Richie's all grown up."

"Did you only just notice?"

"It's . . . confusing's the wrong word, but it's . . . onstage, Richard's the doormat and I'm the sick bastard and you're, I dunno, every fucking thing, the one I fight with and flirt with and sing harmony with. And it's always the same, but offstage . . . "

"Yeah," Tim says. "I know." There've been times when offstage has shrunk down to a dot on the landscape, to a tiny little mental Tasmania while onstage has all the rest of the globe.

Paul slides down the door like all his bones have melted, ending up in a graceless heap. Usually the most beautiful thing about him is how he moves, how he shapes the world around his body. Strange to see it disappear, and Tim wonders how much of it has always been conscious, been performed.

Tim sits besides him. For a little while they're quiet together, and it's . . . nice. Even though the quiet means Paul's got to some advanced stage of misery, a cold plateau of desperation from which he's come to Tim--and here's a thought to shake everything Tim's decided about Paul over the last few years--for comfort.

"Ten years ago," Paul says, in a remote sort of voice like he's narrating a film, "if somebody's said we'd play London and Paris and we'd have two television shows and record albums, I'd have fucking laughed."

"I'd have laughed if somebody said we'd get out of Canberra."

"Or played in a theatre instead of busking and the odd pub."

"We did well."

Paul raises his head. His mascara's smeared. Maybe it's just from wiping sweat out of his eyes, but it doesn't seem impossible, now that they're offstage for ever, that he might actually be crying. "We were brilliant. People loved us and we made money and everyone we knew in the old days wished they were us. And it just kept getting better. The BBC, that would've been next. A show with an audience around the world. We could've been like Monty Python--people would've remembered us in twenty years."

"Paul - "

"We were ten feet from the top of Mount fucking Everest. And you said no, let's turn back."

There's nothing to say, because it's true. And because Paul knows Tim's explanation is a lie. He could've talked his wife round, moved the family to London. But he can't trust his arms and legs to work anymore, not perfectly and not all the time. Can't handle the slow drain of performing every night, and waking up every morning a little more depleted.

Can't tell them. Can't say, "Oh, dear, I'm feeling a bit under the weather this decade. I'm afraid I'll have to ruin our careers, but please be kind and remember I'm an invalid who mustn't be blamed." Can't say, "Remember those times I stuffed up the choreography? Remember how you'd always have a go at me for being lazy? Well, you'd better feel guilty now."

So he's left them to create their own explanations. And both Paul and Richard, he thinks, have settled on the same one; Tim can't bear Paul any longer. Richard, as he's pretty thoroughly fed up with them both, seems to find that understandable. Paul, though. You'd think hurting Paul would be like stepping on a rock--all you'd actually hurt would be yourself. Instead, it's treading on an eggshell with a pair of steel-toed Docs.

"People die on Everest," Tim says. "If they go on when they ought to turn back."

"Sorry, I didn't know the air was so fucking thin in London."

"It was your metaphor."

"Yeah, well, it made sense when I used it." He tugs a few more threads loose from a cuff that's ninety percent loose threads already and blows them into the air like dandelion clocks. One of them lands on Tim's arm. He leaves it there. "How many hours do you reckon we put into it? The group?"

"Most of them." Performing was the easy bit, really. The bit where people cheered. The rest of it was propping your eyes open while you tried to write a segue between two songs, rehearsing the moves for the millionth time, thinking up new jokes and tossing out the ones that didn't work, even painting the fucking backdrops, although Paul did most of that.

"I don't think I've done anything else for ten years. And now . . . "

"I'm sorry."

Paul ignores him. Not maliciously, Tim thinks, but because it just doesn't matter whether he's sorry or not. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thirty-two years old and my life is fucking gone."

It shouldn't have been your whole life, Tim thinks. You should've kept something back for yourself, like I did. Richard, too. But what he and Richard have are wives, families, and that's no answer for Paul.

That's the problem, for Paul. Or part of it. The little bit of life that Tim's hoarded came at Paul's expense. Paul sees it like that, anyway.

Tim takes Paul's thin cold hand in his own, palm to palm. Their rings, Tim's tarnishing silver claddagh and Paul's brutally sophisticated platinum, grate together. A fine unmatching pair, they make.




1995

The knock interrupts him at a crucial stage of the writing process, the looking-out-of-the-window-and-not-actually-thinking-about-anything stage. It must be crucial, because he's never managed to write more than a few hundred words without an interval of it. Maybe it's the [tree]. Maybe the [tree] is a transfigured muse, pure inspiration covered in bark. There was something in an English class long ago about Daphne and laurels and poetry. Laureates.

Muse or not, when he's in the room that he doesn't call a study because he's not a pretentious wanker, with a shut door between the world and the backbreaking, mindbreaking work of digging for words like an ounce of ore in a ton of granite, he doesn't like being interrupted. Not that he's a bastard about it--he won't make the kids wait if they really need him--but it's important. And Natalie's good about it. She never hints that what he's doing isn't work, even on the bad days when it's all staring and no words.

She knocks again, a little louder, and says, "Phone, Tim."

"Who is it?" he asks without getting up.

"Paul." They know a lot of Pauls, but there's only one who could cause her to break into Tim's writing time unless it was an emergency--mostly, Tim knows, it's because she'd rather hand the phone over than argue with Paul. "Paul McDermott," Natalie adds, unnecessarily.

"Thanks, love," he says, shifting a stack of notes and newspaper cuttings until he finds the telephone, which has its ringer taped down in the "off" position. As he's lifting the handset, it occurs to him that this might be an emergency after all. He hasn't spoken to Paul in months. "Hello?"

"A game show, Timmy? Now, we both know Funky Squad was shit, but at least it wasn't a fucking game show."

"Hi, Paul. Lovely to hear your voice."

"There I was, innocently flicking through the channels, because it's not like you bothered to fucking mention that you had a new show, no, I had no fucking warning at all or I'd have worn welding goggles to save my eyes from the radioactive blast of that suit they put you in, I'm innocently flicking through the channels and up pops your fucking masterpiece. What's it called? I Spit On Your Toothbruth?"

The worst possible thing to say is that he likes Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, that it's easy work and the audience is always happy, always hopeful, even when they're being humiliated. Concentrating on not saying that, Tim says the next worst thing instead. "Some of us have families to support."

"You could've thought of that last year, mate. A BBC show would've kept the wife in designer shoes and the kids in gold-plated nappies."

"Bit scratchy." Sometimes Tim used to be able to magic Paul out of these moods, wave the wand of a joke and make him laugh instead of rave. He doesn't have that power anymore, and he ought to have remembered.

"Is this what you wanted, Timmy? When you broke us up - " Not the All Stars, Tim notices, but us. " - was it because the thought of a neon suit and a disgusting oily fucking smile and an assistant with pneumatic tits gave you a stiff one?"

Sometime during that sentence Tim spun his chair away from the door, towards the window, and looking out at hard, green-yellow fruit that are all the tree ever produces, he realises he's got something he's only ever had a few times: an opportunity to make Paul sorry. He could say No, Paul, I left the group because my legs wouldn't work right and sometimes when I picked up a microphone I couldn't feel it. Last month I finally got a diagnosis, and it's multiple fucking sclerosis, so sod off and rant at my myelin sheathing, and by the way, it could get worse at any time and I could end up in a wheelchair gasping for every breath, so I thought I'd better fucking well make some money while I can.

He could do it. He could stand at the top of the moral high ground declaiming the words. Truth's a virtue, after all. It would be virtuous, honest, to load a bit of guilt on Paul's healthy back and watch him stagger under it.

It'd be an end to sarcastic phone calls, finally. The beginning of some new state, some fragility, where Paul would be as careful with him as Tim is with his body, which has to be rested and medicated, doctored and examined, fed nutritious meals and never allowed to get too hot or too cold.

"Paul," Tim says, in the calm measured voice that he's been finding lately, "do you remember 'Joan of Arc'?"

"What's that got - "

"You'd hit me - "

"Pretend to."

"You never got the hang of the fake slap."

"Neither - "

"So you'd hit me and insult me and it was brilliant, everyone loved it. Everyone loved you. But - "

"Tim, for - "

"But the thing is, Paul, it only works that way onstage." He puts the receiver down and crosses his arms over his chest, cold hands shoved into his armpits. As he breathes--shakily, which could be a symptom, but he doesn't think it is--he feels the movement of his wedding ring against his finger. That's the only ring he wears now. He took the claddagh ring off last year, when he came home after the last All Stars tour, and put it in a drawer of his writing desk, behind pens and packs of sticky notes. He hasn't worn it since, and only sometimes, like now, does he remember that it's there.


1998

He's not braced for it, that's the problem. It's half-past seven in the morning and his mind is on tea, toast, and the kids' school satchels; he's only leafing through The Age because it's what he does in the mornings while Natalie gets dressed and the kids devour most of a box of Weetbix between them.

"Perhaps if you wouldn't pull Tracy's hair," he's saying to Billy as he turns a page, "she wouldn't - "

If there hadn't been a picture, his eyes might have slipped right past it. Although as it turns out, that wouldn't have been an escape; later, people ring him to ask if he's seen it, so maybe it's just as well he's got a bit of forewarning.

In fact there are two pictures, one of Paul and one of Richard. And a headline: The Two of Us. And, for a trilogy of two-ness, there are two separate interviews. It would've been a lot of trouble, Tim supposes later, to interview or photograph Paul and Richard together, since Paul's in Sydney and Richard's in Brisbane. And Tim's in Melbourne. Splitting the All Stars was a bit like splitting an atom; the force scattered them wide.

Tim is named in the article exactly once: to say that neither Paul nor Richard has spoken a word to him since 1994. It's not even true. Richard rings now and again, and even though Paul's been silent since the row over Toothbrush, before that they talked . . . well, objectively it wasn't very often, but every conversation lingered.

Did the reporter make it up, or did they lie to him? Whose invention is it, this story that erases Tim down to a few smudges and gaps? He doesn't even get to be the villain anymore.

"Daddy, Billy took my serviette and wiped his mouth! Daddy!"

For a second, before he turns back to his life, Tim finds himself looking at the pictures again. At Paul's picture. Paul with his almost-respectable haircut and his Good News Week suit, his exaggerated and playful scowl, his clean healthy normality. The old Paul's gone. And what are memories but circles we draw around ourselves? The center shifts, the circle moves, and what used to be is nothing but a pinprick and a meaningless line.

***

Tim's feet hurt. They've been hurting for days, and although it's the ordinary ache of rehearing dances in Frank N. Furter's high heels and not some stealthy new advance of his MS, it still nags at him more than it probably should. He kicks off his trainers at the door and stands happily shoeless on the rug, flexing his toes and looking through a stack of post. Bills; a ludicrously small royalty cheque for Left, Right, and Centre; proposals that ought to have gone through his agent; a couple of fans letters (one in red ink) that he bins on the principle that if they've found out his home address, the last thing he wants to do is encourage them; and a padded envelope with a Sydney postmark and the return address "U. Sless Faquitt." Even if he didn't recognise the handwriting, he'd know that had to be Paul.

Tim takes the parcel up to what he's long since surrendered to calling his study, and doesn't open it. He has a late dinner with Natalie and the kids and tells little Chloe the latest installment of their bedtime serial, "The Adventures of the Girl Pirates on Mars," before he slips away. "Just a couple of things to do," he tells Natalie, as though he's going to write. She must have noticed the parcel, but she doesn't ask.

Inside the envelope, there's . . . a thing. A rough-edged rectangle of thick paper the colour of very milky tea. Painted on it are the words "I'm sorry" in large letters, and a cartoon of a kneeling, pleading Paul and a stern, schoolmasterish Tim. On the other side, in ink, more words: "I really am. Ring me. Please?" and a phone number. Not a new one; did Paul think Tim might have thrown the number away, deliberately forgotten it?

It's almost two hours before Tim picks up the phone. He can't, somehow, talk to Paul for the first time in three years until the house has gone silent around him, and the neighbourhood too, until that late-night feeling comes over everything, that cool pleasant isolation like the bottom of the sea.

It might be someone else's hand tapping the number buttons. But Paul's "hello," unsleepy, unstartled, the voice of someone who always stays up late, re-anchors Tim to himself.

"Paul," he says. "It's - "

"Tim. I'm glad you called."

Caller ID, Tim thinks, but he doubts it. The truth is that Paul knows his voice as he knows Paul's handwriting. There's a recognition between them, whether they like it or not. "Nice drawing, by the way. I liked it. Wouldn't mind seeing you beg for forgiveness in real life."

"I am - "

"Sorry. Yeah."

"You know what I'm like with journos."

"So it's all inevitable? You're a windup toy and you can't help talking about me like I'm a sad wanker who you never could stand?"

"You know that's not true."

"I know that you said it."

"Fuck." Paul gives it about twelve syllables, a long hiss and thump like a deflating tire. "Timmy - "

"The only thing I wouldn't have expected is the apology. Is that Richard's doing?"

"He did say something about having me slowly dismembered--still alive, mind you--and then buried beneath six different small town parking lots where I would be trodden underfoot by bogans for the next thirty years."

"Richard was always too nice."

There's a high, squeaky snort as Paul fails to repress a laugh. "Can we take it as read that I'm a cunt, then, or do I have to keep saying so?"

Tim can picture him, curled up in a big stern chair in his expensive Bondi flat, with his stylish hair and his stylish specs and his lips curled in the "you know you adore me really" smile he uses whenever he's really got up an audience's nose. "When you said that you hadn't spoken to me since the group split--that was you, yeah?"

"Mmm."

"It was almost bloody true."

"You were the one who put the phone down."

"You're the one who didn't ring back."

"So are you. I thought - I thought I'd give you a little time to get over it. And . . . "

Silence down the line, silence in the room, in the house, on the streets outside. Tim wonders if it's noisy in Bondi. If he could fly to Sydney and sit on the beach with Paul while the last stars fade and they could talk their way out of this fucking Trappist vow they've taken between them. "And?"

"Fuck, I don't know. Time to miss me."

"Three years?"

"It got a bit out of hand." Which could be the motto for almost everything in their lives since they met: It got a bit out of hand. Tim doesn't remember that happening to him much, before Paul. But his life's well in hand now, stable and sane, happy and healthy. Safe as houses.

"Some brass-balled journo from [gossipy tabloid or magazine] asked me for a comment. About your interview, I mean."

"'Paul McDermott is a cunt' would've made a gorgeous headline."

"I'll ring her back tomorrow," Tim says. Not much of a joke, but Paul laughs a little. In all these years, Tim's never got over the urge to make Paul laugh.

"I've got an even better idea. Come on Good News Week. People will see us friends, they won't give a fuck about an old interview."

Tim thinks, friends? And that he's busy and it would be stupid to fly to Sydney for a half-hour quiz show. And what if they schedule him in and he has a relapse?

"Richard's been on. Three times. That's got to be against the natural order of the universe."

"Is this about playing nice for the cameras, Paul? Living down a bit of bad press?"

"No." The showbiz charm has gone out of Paul's voice. "I . . . I'd like it, that's all. Because I've fucking missed you. That joke was on me, what a surprise."

You could've rung, Tim thinks, but he's spent years in small rooms with Paul and knows that nothing's ever that simple for him. For Paul, the universe's big joke is on him like a fallen rock, and struggling only makes it worse. "I'm not free until next month."

Paul laughs, happy, triumphant, and in his silent room, Tim is smiling.



Where it was going: I was trying to follow the actual events of Paul and Tim's lives as closely as I could, including not breaking up Tim's marriage until he and his wife actually separated ca. 2004. So Tim would've gone on GNW, as he actually did, and he and Paul would've spent the night together afterwards, but in the morning Tim would've gone home, because whatever weird and painful and persistent thing he has with Paul, he loves his wife and kids. My memory of a lot of what I had planned after that has faded, but at some point Tim was going to tell Paul about his MS, and they'd end up having sex again and this time an actual affair would begin, which would put a strain on Tim's marriage and eventually contribute to breaking it up. At first Tim and Paul would still be separate, having a covert long-distance relationship, because of Tim wanting to protect his kids from gossip, etc. But some time would pass, and Tim would discover that now that Paul's older and also (because Tim's marriage has ended) not wracked with jealousy and insecurity, he's bearable to be around for long periods of time, and they'd move in together and live happily ever after. May the gods of fiction forgive me, I think I'd intended for Tim to start wearing the ring again, possibly with Paul wearing an actually matching one now. I swear I'd have either found a way to make it less cringe-inducing than it sounds or eventually cut it.



4. My Beautiful Laundrette fic (Omar/Johnny, 500 words, nothing sexually explicit). This is the Yuletide 2010 story I started and couldn't finish, eventually dropping out of Yuletide.



Johnny's put on a tie. It's a horrible, paisley, 10p-at-Oxfam sort of tie, and if Johnny didn't look so nervous Omar might think he was taking the piss.

Naturally, the first words out of Papa's mouth are "My God, boy, you look bloody awful." But he doesn't mean the tie, he means Johnny's puffy lips and the bruise that blacks his eye and shades out over his face, purple to green to yellow. "I hope that wretched Selim is grateful."

"Yes, Papa," Omar says. Selim's been talking--more or less, since he lost three teeth--about how much he owes Johnny and Omar, but there's a look in his eye that says it'll all be for Selim's own benefit in the end. The big money, that's what he's bound to be thinking of, money that pours out of Pakistan in false beards and videocassette boxes. Big quick dirty money, and Omar's not sure how he's going to keep himself and Johnny out of it. No more rough stuff. They've promised each other.

"How are you, Mr. Ali?" Johnny asks. He sounds like a kid, and he looks like one, rocking up and down on the balls of his feet.

Papa looks down at his pyjamas--clean ones, at least--and his socks with the hole at the toe. "Never better." A train passes the window then, and the next thing Omar hears is " - but hadn't you better stop calling me Mr. Ali? After all, you're part of the family now, Johnny."

"Johnny, why don't - " Omar tries, but it's too late. Johnny's face has gone stoplight-red around the bruises, a red you could see a mile away, a big bright signpost of an answer to the question Papa was too sly to ask. And Papa's not like Uncle Nasser, happy to pretend he doesn't know.

"I'd like to be," Johnny says.

There's a kind of shifting in the air that makes Omar think of cartoon rocks teetering at the edge of cartoon cliffs. Papa stares at Johnny. But what Johnny is he seeing? Omar's school friend, or the skinhead with white laces in his Docs, or the Johnny who's here in his ugly tie and his smashed face, with his elbow just brushing Omar's? And even then, it's not simple. I'm with you, Johnny says, and he's proved it, but in a way he's the end of the family, too. No grandchildren for Papa, no new generation of Alis.

Papa's eyes flick left, towards the bed and the little table with its picture of Omar's mum. Mary Taylor, who became Mary Ali, who used to get anonymous letters calling her a Paki-loving whore, who jumped under a train. Who always liked Johnny. Who cried when she saw him wearing a National Front badge. "Well . . . " Papa turns back to Johnny and smiles a little. He still looks worried; Omar can't remember a time when he didn't. "If you fancy your own metaphorical immigration, who am I to stop you?"


Where it was going: Well, that was the problem. I wanted there to be some conversation about Johnny's past as a racist skinhead, I know that. And I wanted somehow to get at the idea of families, both constructed and born, and how intersectionality strains at families and makes them all the more necessary.



I haven't included two substantial stalled WIPs that I still hope to finish (in Hot Fuzz and X-Men: First Class, both of which only need editing).



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/08/12--10:11: Doctor Who: "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" (chan 1930640)

I finally got around to watching the Doctor Who Christmas special last night. It was . . . okay. I liked it while it was happening, mostly, although I could have done without the gratuitous gender essentialism about Motherhood and what looked very much like a reincarnation of an ugly old joke about women drivers.

I'm also a little bit tired of the whole "the Doctor is manically charming and to some extent just plain manic" routine. It worked great in Smith's first episode, but every retread has been a bit more lifeless.

It's probably very wrong of me that I didn't want the husband to be saved, right? It's just so predictable, now, that in any kind of nuclear-family focused episode, parents and children will always be saved. And whatever happened to not being able to alter the timelines by changing what's already happened?

I did like a lot of the dialogue, as I usually do in a Moffat-written episode, and inevitably I teared up a bit at the reunion with Amy and Rory, despite my resistance because I knew that's exactly what I was supposed to do. (Why no hug from Rory? I was disappointed.)

One of the things I thought about during and after the episode is that, although classic Who was also a family show that was supposed to appeal to a young audience, there were very few children actually in it. I would like this happy state of affairs to resume, please.



In other news, I am dangerously excited for tonight's Sherlock episode. This almost certainly means I am doomed to disappointment.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/08/12--11:44: fandom snowflake challenge (chan 1930640)

I got a bit behind on these.

Day 5

In your own space, share something non-fannish you are passionate about with your fannish friends. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

You know, I'm not sure I'm passionate about much besides fandom. I'm passionate about a lot of things in fandom, but outside of fandom I don't really have hobbies or consuming interests.

Cooking is probably the closest thing I have to a non-fannish passion. I enjoy it, I'm always interested in learning more about it, and if I didn't restrain myself I would spend way too much money on it. Sometimes I spend too much money on it anyway (*sadly contemplates collection of "ingredients I may need someday," such as palm sugar and tamarind paste*).


Day 6

In your own space, rec at least 3 fanworks you thought you wouldn't like (because they weren't your fandom or they pushed against your boundaries or you thought you just wouldn't be interested) and that you ended up loving.

Honestly, if I think I'm not going to like something, I just don't read it. As a reader I'm picky as hell, and what I'm willing to read on any given day depends on my mood as well as my general likes and dislikes. (I've been having real trouble getting through the Yuletide stories, for example, because at the moment I'm only in the mood to read fic in a few fandoms, not to explore.)

I realize this is hypocritical of me, because I'm constantly wishing that more people would dare to try new/tiny fandoms or unusual pairings when I write them. *wryface*


Day 7

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Drop a link to your wish-list in this post. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.

1) Art based on One Small Step or any other of my Tintin/Haddock fics. Or, for that matter, any Tintin/Haddock shippy art, preferably more on the snuggles-n-kisses side of shippy rather than the full-on porny side. (I have nothing against porny fanart, but sometimes I think there's rather a dearth of the non-porny romantic kind.)

2) Fic in my tiny fandoms, such as Colditz (*makes hopeful eyes at halotolerant*), Doug Anthony All Stars RPF, or China Miéville's Bas Lag books. Some suggestions: George Brent having to deal with the same-sex desires he's repressed since his school days, Dick Player being unable to get out of Germany after his escape and turning up on Paul von Eissinger's doorstep, Pat/Dick or another pairing as an open secret and how the other men react to it; Paul McDermott trying, post-DAAS, to wrest his own personality back from his stage persona, Tim telling Paul that he (Tim) has MS; Uther Doul and the Brucolac slash that doesn't ignore their rivalry, Uther Doul's backstory, Tanner Sack's backstory, Tanner Sack moving on from Shekel's death and finding a man who can return his love.

3. I'd love to see more meta/discussion posts about fandoms that interest me, especially if they can take a position somewhere between total "this show/movie/book is flawless and don't you dare say otherwise" squee and utter condemnation of the "this show/movie/book is morally bad and you're a bad person if you like it" sort. (Seriously, as many problems as I've had with Sherlock, the more posts of the latter type I see, the more I want to defend it.)

4. Recs! I am hard to rec for, I know, because I'm a picky reader (see above). But I'm always in search of cool things to read (fanfic or profic) and watch, especially genre stuff of reasonably good quality and with either m/m slashiness or actual queer characters (preferably male, because that's what I'm most into). Problematic texts are okay, especially if they're older, so long as they're not so faily that the bad outweighs the good. (Where this line falls is going to be different for different people, I realize.)



Day 8

In your own space, talk about a talent (or talents) you have. Everyone's got something they're good at. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Oh boy. Um, I'm a pretty good home cook, but I wouldn't call that talent so much as a lot of practice. And I'm not a bad writer, although I feel like I hit a plateau several years ago and haven't really improved since then in the way I'd have wished to. But again, writing is also largely a matter of practice. I think most things are. There are studies showing that the thing that separates high achievers in, for example, classical music from the rest isn't their innate talent, it's how much they practice.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/09/12--19:46: Sherlock 2x02, "The Hounds of Baskerville" (chan 1930640)

My two blessed days off did not quite materialize. Yesterday, just as I was *ahem* acquiring the new episode of Sherlock, one of my co-workers called to say her car had broken down and could I take her shift? So I ended up being at work from 4-11 pm, then today I had my previously scheduled shift of 8 am - 4 pm. (Today I learned I'm getting Wednesday off in exchange for working yesterday, so you needn't feel too sorry for me.) I am a bit tired, not helped by the fact that when I got home last night I decided "screw it" and watched Sherlock anyway.



Somehow its plot managed to be even sillier than the original Hound of the Baskervilles, which is something of a feat. I'd like to believe that one reason I didn't immediately guess the villain is that I assumed, because of the name, it would be Stapleton. Ah, well.

Things I liked: mostly non-villainous and not hopelessly stereotyped gay men, Sherlock's freak-out after seeing the hound, John getting fed up with Sherlock's behavior and Sherlock actually worrying about losing John's friendship (but also, in a very Sherlock fashion, taking advantage of John yet again), John no longer bothering to argue when people assume he and Sherlock are a couple, Russell Tovey, tanned!Lestrade, John and Sherlock undercover at Baskerville, the scenery, Sherlock posing dramatically atop the scenery, the "cheekbones" line, Mycroft's brief appearances (I'm starting to wish I was watching "The Adventures of Mycroft Holmes, With Occasional Appearances by His Little Brother and Dr. John Watson"). ETA: I also liked realizing why people find Benedict Cumberbatch beautiful, which I never quite saw until this episode.

Things I didn't especially like: H.O.U.N.D. as an acronym, the general unmotivated randomness of most of the plot, vast pipeline networks of hallucinogenic gas, John attempting to seduce the psychiatrist for information (and Sherlock using her attractiveness as a lure to get John to help him again), the baffling obsessed!out-of-control!Moriarty scene at the end. And speaking of which, when was Moriarty arrested, anyway? And why, and how?

I'm trying not to get my hopes up for next week's finale, considering who wrote it. And I'm also trying not to dwell on how Steven Moffat could be such a poor showrunner as to let that idiot (the same writer responsible for last season's utterly irredeemable "The Blind Banker") write the season finale. Or anything, come to that. But perhaps the universe will surprise me and it will actually be good.



ETA: And I seem to have a Sherlock icon now. Oops.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/10/12--11:25: two Sherlock recs (chan 1930640)

I've been tentatively exploring in this fandom; here are a couple of stories I've especially loved.

Lift Up Mine Eyes To The Hills (15939 words) by AJHall
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Withnail & I (1986)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: John/Sherlock; Withnail/Peter Marwood(I) (unrequited); Withnail/OFC (ill-advised)
Characters: John Watson; Sherlock Holmes; Withnail; Uncle Monty; Peter Marwood (I)
Summary: In the aftermath of an intensely stressful case, John takes a depressed and exhausted Sherlock to the Lakes to recuperate. However, ghosts from Sherlock's family history intrude upon his recovery, confronting him with a mystery which has an unequivocally personal dimension.

Yes, this is a Withnail and I crossover. Trust me, it works. There's a lot of melancholy in this story, but tenderness and hope, too. Married a bit, in my view, by the author's evident dislike of Mycroft.


The Physics of Present Tense (37850 words) by paxlux
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warning: Underage
Relationships: Sherlock/Mycroft, the Holmes brothers
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade (Inspector), John Watson
Summary: It happens instantaneously, but it takes years. It’s like looking up at the stars and spinning around with your arms out and letting gravity take you.

This story blew me away. It's not a pairing I was looking for or inclined to fancy, but Paxlux does an amazing, amazing job of getting into both brothers' heads and showing what draws them together as well as the tensions between them that we see onscreen. (This story fits seamlessly into Sherlock canon; it's not an AU.) I was a bit worried there would be Watson-bashing, but Watson is written with respect and affection. (If anything, I think he fits so effortlessly into Sherlock's and Mycroft's lives that it strains plausibility a bit, but it's a deserved happy ending after what the characters go through, and the emotional groundwork is laid even though I think the ending could have used another few thousand words of development. Anyway, the story overall is so strong that this is a relatively minor point. Read it if you possibly can.)



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.


01/14/12--08:26: RIP (chan 1930640)

One of my favorite writers, Reginald Hill, died yesterday. *sigh*

Read his books; they're wonderful. In particular, read his Dalziel and Pascoe novels; even if you're not particularly a fan of mysteries, you'll probably like them because they're got fascinating characters, including real character development in the recurring cast, and are beautifully, intelligently, wittily written. Deadheads is a good place to start, then read the rest in order through Death's Jest-Book, then read the very early ones and the very late ones, because although they're not as strong as the middle run, by that time you'll be so fond of the characters that you'll want to read everything.

Then write some fanfic, maybe. That's all we have, now. *sighs again*



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01/15/12--19:03: Sherlock 2x03, "The Reichenbach Fall" (chan 1930640)

That was so good I'm not sure I believe Steve Thompson wrote it.

There were plot things one could nitpick, but I really don't want to. This story was all about emotions--Sherlock's, John's, Moriarty's (god help us), Mycroft's, everyone's. And it worked.

Awesome things: Moriarty with the crown jewels, John and Sherlock before the trial (um, did we all notice that they were both in John's bedroom getting dressed? ETA: Oops, my mistake, they're actually in the living room. I was confused by the following shot of them walking downstairs.), Moriarty and Sherlock having tea, John and Sherlock's great escape, Lestrade's faith and then his doubt, John's absolute unwavering trust in Sherlock, John and Sherlock's great escape, Mycroft's fuck-up and his guilt, the twist that there never was a key code, and the whole incredible rooftop scene from the Sherlock-Moriarty confrontation and Moriarty's suicide right through to the phone call (*sobs*) and Sherlock's leap. ETA: And the graveside scene, of course, with John's little rehearsed "last farewell" and then him losing his control and begging for a miracle. And the opening scene with the therapist, where he can barely say Sherlock's name.

I want to know how Sherlock did it, and what Molly's role was, but if there's never a series 3, this was a hell of an episode to end on. (ETA2: Just saw the announcement that Moffat has confirmed there'll be a series 3.)

One point: Sherlock was right. Emotions are a weakness. If he felt nothing for John (and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade) he could have eliminated Moriarty and walked away a hero. In becoming the good man Lestrade was convinced he could be, Sherlock has given hostages to fortune, sacrificed the easy invincibility of the person who doesn't care.

Oh, and also: I really hope I'm not the only one who finds Moriarty disturbingly . . . sexy? I mean, he's a creepy little psychopath, but, damn. I did not want to be shipping him and Sherlock the way I was throughout this episode. It's a totally separate thing from the way I ship John and Sherlock, but, yeah, part of me kind of wants dark fic where Moriarty seduces Sherlock to his side and the two of them take over the world.

There's going to be so much good fic from this episode. *quivers* I'm almost glad about the hiatus, since it'll mean more fic. Including, I hope, some where Mycroft and John try to console each other and there is sex and loneliness and long talks and also sex. Or Lestrade and John. Or Mycroft and Sherlock keeping Sherlock's not!deadness a secret and Sherlock feeling horrible about John and Mycroft consoling talking sense into him and the two of them quarreling and bringing up all their childhood issues and locked together because they do love each other, in the end. (Yes, possibly in that way too.)

I want to READ ALL THE FIC right now. Write, fandom, write!

ETA3: I think Sherlock wants John to figure out that the suicide was faked. The line in the phone call about the "magic trick" was a pretty big hint.



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01/17/12--18:01: imdb boards: concentrated human stupidity (chan 1930640)

I was looking on IMDB trying to find out what kind of car Peter Guillam drives in the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (and I never did find out--do any of you know?). The boards are incredibly disheartening. Post after post of "OMG SO BORING" and "Was Peter Guillam gay?" and "Were Jim Prideaux and Bill Haydon supposed to be in some kind of homosexual relationship?". And people not understanding that the Christmas party scenes were flashbacks, which even I got and I am not the greatest at interpreting complex visual storytelling. But I'd have hoped anyone would realize that the presence of Control at the party indicated that it happened before Control died. *headdesk*

No wonder shitty movies make all the money.



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01/17/12--21:45: more Sherlock recs (chan 1930640)

I've been reading a lot of Sherlock fic and I have some recs. (Interestingly, I've had more success finding fic I like by just randomly going through and trying things that sound interesting than by selecting the stories that have received the most kudos and bookmarks. Go figure.)

Eight recs below the cut, five post-Reichenbach and three that predate S2.



Post-"Reichenbach Fall" fics

Action Man (2079 words) by thesardine
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mycroft - Character, Sherlock - Character, Mr. Holmes
Summary: Mycroft, Post-Reichenbach. He’d known long ago that Sherlock would never see forty. It was written all over him.

My favorite of the post-Reichenbach fics so far. I adore Mycroft, and this look at him, his experiences of grief, and his relationship with Sherlock made me cry. It's slightly marred by some cultural references that seem too American to me, but that's a small flaw in a wonderful story.


When You Think He's Not Looking (1431 words) by etothepii
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/Jim Moriarty
Characters: Sebastian Moran
Summary: You're not like him. He trusts you, but (because) you're not like him. You're just a sniper, a killer-for-hire he'd hired on permanently. You're still a person, still ordinary, and he sometimes he says it with a sneer and sometimes a groan, but you never mind that because once you'd heard him say it like he wished he was too and the agony in his voice had made your blood freeze cold. Spoilers for S2.

Apparently there's a bit of a trend in the Sherlock fandom to import Sebastian Moran from the bookverse; this is the most successful iteration of it. I love the way Moran and Moriarty darkly mirror Sherlock and John, but are also strikingly their own disturbing selves.


build a room, take the time (1277 words) by pailette
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Summary: Somewhere between believing and seeing, is Sherlock.

Very good grieving!John, with a hopeful ending and lyrical prose.


Something for the Rag and Bone Man (1022 words) by Lindentreeisle
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: John Watson, Ella Thompson
Summary: He got his tenses mixed up a lot, talking to Sherlock.

Angry!grieving!John. This one is all angst, but done subtly and without melodrama.


The Mourning Woman (2278 words) by M_Leigh
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Molly Hooper, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes
Summary: "The last time Molly Hooper had a secret to keep, for somebody other than herself, she was fifteen years old." Molly takes care of business, after the fall. Sherlock/John-ish.

This one does justice to the depths we know Molly has, and is also a nice look at Sherlock and John's relationship from an outside perspective.


Other (pre-Reichenbach) fics

The Anatomist (24253 words) by rosa_acicularis
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Molly Hooper/Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Molly Hooper, Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Summary: When they are children, Moriarty is a game. A story they tell only to each other, in whispers. Jim and Molly Moriarty, from the beginning.

A fantastic story that shows us, in beautifully economical prose, what the mind of an actual high-functioning sociopath (and I don't mean Sherlock's fanciful self-diagnosis) might be like. Jossed by S2, but don't let that put you off.


The Corners Where Roads Cross (23823 words) by alizarin_nyc
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade (Inspector), Sally Donovan, Jim Moriarty, Original Characters
Summary: It begins, as always, with a dead body. To reach the conclusion of the case, however, will require Sherlock and John to let go of what's reasonable, what's logical and the things that hold them back.

A well written casefic + romance that shows Sherlock's (and John's) fucked-up side and doesn't try to "normalize" them.


Bird's Bone (20048 words) by thesardine
Fandom: Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Characters: Mycroft Holmes, Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Summary: When Sherlock and John are abducted by an unknown agent, Mycroft goes head to head with Moriarty to uncover the evasive truth about the incident. For the first time in his life he finds he may be in over his head...

Fair warning: this is an unfinished WIP that hasn't been updated in almost three months. It may never be finished. But what there is is so good that I'm reccing it anyway. This is dark as hell, and I'm going to add a trigger warning for (highlight to read) (skip) Mycroft having unacted-on incestuous feelings towards Sherlock , but it's absolutely riveting, avoids hurt/comfort cliches, and features a harrowing scene between Mycroft and Moriarty that I may never get out of my mind.



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01/18/12--19:04: my last two days, summarized (chan 1930640)

1) Out of random curiosity, watch a talk show appearance by Benedict Cumberbatch.

2) Discover that in interviews Benedict Cumberbatch is low-key, modest, charming, thoughtful, and well-spoken.

3) Discover that some of the alienness of his appearance on Sherlock must be due to make-up, lighting, and body language, and that he is also capable of looking like this:





4) Fall in love with Benedict Cumberbatch.

5) Discover that he is straight. Feel sad about this.

6) Decide to WATCH ALL THE THINGS he's in anyway. Or at least the ones that don't focus on a heterosexual relationship his character's having.

ETA: 7) Decide to prove my cred by mentioning that, although my crush is new, I first noticed Benedict Cumberbatch when he was in Amazing Grace. I posted a review in early 2007 that mentions Cumberbatch's excellent performance as William Pitt.



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01/20/12--13:28: fic: "A Profession of Lies" (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy movieverse) (chan 1930640)

Title: A Profession of Lies
Fandom: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 film)
Characters: Peter Guillam, Jim Prideaux
Rating: Teen
Warnings: (skip) Mention of suicidal thoughts, period-appropriate homophobic language.
Word count: 2726
Summary: Jim wants an end to lies; Peter's not so sure.
Notes: This story is definitely movieverse, but I've imported the odd bit of book canon that seemed to fit. Although this story is complete in itself, there may eventually be a sequel. Many thanks to halotolerant for an awesome beta and Britpick.




As he reaches for the telephone, still barely awake, Peter says "sorry" automatically before remembering that there's no need. The other side of the bed is empty, and has been for almost a month. The tidy shape of his new life ought to be sinking in by now.

He fumbles with the receiver--shouldn't have gone to sleep drunk, and he's lucky it's not the sort of sudden awakening for which he'd need to draw his gun--and finally gets it the right way round. "Yes?"

"Peter? It's George. How are you keeping, old chap?"

"Perfectly," Peter answers, meaning he's free to talk openly.

"Right," Smiley says, in that soothing voice that never seems to change, whether he's at a party or an interrogation. "I'm afraid there's a bit of a problem I need you to handle. Jim Prideaux walked into a police station tonight and confessed to murder."

"Christ!" Peter sits up, wide awake now. "Who's he supposed to have - " Bill Haydon. It must have been. The rumours about a Soviet assassin on the loose are nonsense. George's questions must have made Prideaux reason his way to the same awful answer that Peter didn't want to believe until he saw Bill in the safe house. And then Prideaux took revenge for his wounded shoulder, his forced retirement, his official death.

"That's all I know. It seems he's not very coherent. Drunk. But he gave his real name, which is why it was flagged for Mendel and Mendel rang me. The questioning's been halted, of course."

Smiley must've pulled every string he's got. "What do you need me to do?"

"Get him out, impress upon the police that the matter is closed, use the magic words 'Official Secrets Act' as necessary, and then talk to Jim. See if you can calm him down."

"But I've hardly met the man, George. You've known him for years. Oughtn't it to be you?"

"It ought to be anybody but me."

"Yes, of course, I see. Sorry." Haydon ran Prideaux during the war, and they were friends afterwards; Peter remembers seeing them talk together over tea sometimes in Haydon's office, when business brought Prideaux in from Brixton. Poor bastard. The betrayal must have hurt worse than the bullet. "So where is he?"

He's in Taunton, it seems, near the little prep school where Resettlement wangled him a teaching job. Peter begins to believe the stories about Resettlement's indifference, so dull-minded and profound as to be indistinguishable from malice. Surely they could have found something better for a man with Prideaux's record?

It's a long drive from London to Taunton, even though in the small hours the M4 and M5 are as empty as they ever get. Peter arrives at the police station just in time to catch the night shift on their way out. It's a bit of luck, reducing both paperwork and the number of people involved. Before long, he's in possession of a thin, bedraggled, nearly sober, sick-looking Jim Prideaux.

Prideaux doesn't utter a word until they're in Peter's car, then says flatly, "I won't go back to Thursgood's."

"No, you bloody well won't."

"Ah. Where, then? Sarratt? That would be interesting. I could write a report comparing interrogation techniques. I wonder if our lot have started using electricity too."

"Don't - "

"Or are we going to a nice secluded forest somewhere, just you and me and a revolver? I won't even try to run."

"Don't," Peter says again, "talk nonsense." He starts the car and heads back towards the motorway. "You're going to stay with me in London for a while, until you're feeling better."

"Really? How long do you expect that to take?" Earlier, Peter tried to ask George the same question, and got the same helpless silence that's all Peter can manage now. After a few seconds, Prideaux ventures, "Aren't you a bit senior to be babysitting?"

"Mr. Smiley wants this kept unofficial."

"I expect he does." Prideaux rubs at his left shoulder, which he carries high and stiffly; it's uncomfortable even to look at. He makes a sound that is remotely like a laugh, as bones are remotely like a person. "I did it, you know. I shot Bill."

Well, Peter thinks, thank Christ someone did. It's a dishonest thought. The truth is, he liked Bill. Everyone liked Bill. Even George. The blank existence Bill would have had as a defector, kept on ice when not paraded around as a model Soviet citizen, was as much punishment as Peter ever wished on him. Bill--sophisticated, witty, urbane, sociable Bill--would've been miserable. Given the choice, he might have preferred the ending Prideaux gave him.

"You mustn't go around saying that," Peter answers.

"Why not? It's a free bloody country, isn't it?"

"Oh, be your age." Like this morning's sorry, it's a fossilised bit of Peter's old life. He used to say it to Michael when they'd have a row about Peter's unreliability, his variable hours and sudden trips abroad, his demanding but unspecified job.

It silences Prideaux, as it used to silence Michael. Peter drives northwards, clutching the steering wheel so hard his fingers cramp. Not long after reaching the M4, Peter stops for breakfast. Prideaux is obviously hung over now and won't eat, but he drinks cup after cup of sour coffee. His movements are mechanical, his eyes blank. He doesn't look like a man who's enjoying his vengeance.

It makes Peter do a bit of mental re-filing. Prideaux is not naturally violent, not a thug. Nor is he a self-dramatising little toad like Rikki Tarr, despite the trouble he's stirred up in the last twelve hours. He's a good agent, a good man from what George has said, who's been with the Circus since he was twenty, done miracles during the war, and after thirty-five years been shot, tortured, hustled into a dismal retirement, and had his best friend exposed as a mole.

Peter is supposed to be helping him, somehow.

"Here." Peter offers him a flask, which is the only help he's got to hand.

Prideaux takes it, sniffs the contents, and tops up his half-empty coffee cup to the brim with whisky. At Peter's gesture, he tucks the flask into the pocket of his ill-fitting, schoolmasterish tweed jacket. "Thanks."

Back in the car, Prideaux takes sips directly from the flask at precise five-minute intervals. He's rationing it. It's been a long time, Peter thinks, since Prideaux has been completely sober.

Peter tries to think of something to say to draw him out, unthreatening small talk of the kind Smiley uses so well. But every sentence falls flat in his imagination. He decides the only subject on his mind must be the only one on Prideaux's, too. "Why did you do it?"

Prideaux takes another drink of the whisky, three minutes early and a much larger one than before. "Why did I go to the police?"

"No."

Another swallow, tipping the flask sharply up; it must be almost empty. "I . . . I had to."

Peter glances at him, but he's looking out of the side window, face turned away. Peter waits until he takes a last drink from the flask and hands it back, then says, "The bottle's under the seat."

Prideaux rummages, finds it, and takes two deep gulps. He's moved from holding off sobriety to needing to be drunk again. "This won't change my answer. I had to. That's all I know."

"You were angry with him."

"Of course I'm angry with him!" Yet another drink. "Yes, present tense. I'm not so far gone I can't hear myself."

"You're so angry that you went to the police and turned yourself in?"

"If contradictions bother you, you're in the wrong line of work." He offers the bottle to Peter, who drinks. Just a little one, because he's tired, but Prideaux's bleakness is starting to knot up his nerves. His nerves are easily affected, lately.

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing. That I'd shot Bill Haydon. They didn't take me seriously for several repetitions. Then they went haring off to find out who Bill Haydon was and if he'd been shot on their patch. They never came back."

It's the first bit of good news Peter's had since his telephone rang. Thank God for Mendel's alertness. It occurs to him to wonder if Smiley had asked Mendel to keep an eye out for just this sort of thing. Smiley has, after all, known Jim Prideaux for a long time.

"I'd have told them everything," Prideaux continues, "if they'd given me a chance." The drink is starting to show in the slackening of his hunched posture and of course his urge to talk. "Tired of lies. Sick and tired of them."

"If lies bother you - "

"All right, Polly Parrot. Lies were my job. But lies were my damn life, too. Lied to the Circus, couldn't tell them the truth of course, not and stay. Lied about myself every minute of every day, except when we . . . ." The bottle, Peter notices as Prideaux raises it again, is getting alarmingly low. He'll stop if he needs to and buy another one. "I was a lie. Never thought of Bill as a liar, though. All those years, and I thought he just . . . hell, I don't know. Misdirected a little bit. Hid me. Well, not only me. Never only me, even leaving out the other thing."

Understanding whispers in Peter's mind, an intimation of knowledge, like footsteps in the dark.

"If we met at the Circus he used to ask me how I was. We used to have tea. Old acquaintances, oh yes."

The knowledge comes clear. The footsteps have weight, and purpose, and a name. "You and he, you were . . . you loved him."

"I love him." Prideaux turns and looks at Peter defiantly for a moment before slumping back. "It was supposed to end. I sighted him and I pulled the trigger and that was supposed to end it. But it didn't end. It's never bloody well going to end."

"Everything ends," Peter says. Love ends, and so do mourning, regret, guilt, loneliness. It's the faith he clings to on bad days.

"Christ. I think I can remember being as young as you."

"I'm older than I look." He turned thirty-four last week. Since Michael left--since Peter chucked him out without explanation--Peter has felt about fifty, on a good day.

"Yes, we all are." Prideaux sighs and finishes off the bottle in one go. "Here's a funny thing. You're not shocked, little Peter. There's a self-confessed pansy in your car and all you've said is 'you loved him.' I think you're one of us. Are you a queer, Peter?"

No one's ever asked. Not when the Circus vetted him (the question was heavily implied, but never quite posed, and so Peter only had to imply his lying answer). Not his friends, not his parents who worry that he's still single, not even the men he's had. Not one person has ever directly asked.

"Yes," says Peter. It feels like scratching an itch he's been half-aware of for years, so he says it again. "Yes. I'm queer."

"I wanted to tell them I was queer. The police. I'm sorry I didn't get the chance." Prideaux lifts the bottle again, frowns at its emptiness, and drops it onto the floor. "'I'm a homosexual and I've killed the man I love, just like Oscar Wilde said we do.' I can imagine the looks on their faces."

"Each man."

"What?"

"Each man kills the thing he loves. That's what Wilde said. Not just . . . us."

"Very good. I never actually read it. Bill read bits of it to me. It was the sort of thing one did at Oxford."

Not at Peter's Oxford, but then, he's of a different generation. Post-war, unromantic. He only read Oscar Wilde because a tutor insisted. "It's frightful doggerel."

"Tell me this, Peter. Who have you killed?"

"No one," Peter says, gripped by a strange panic. In the literal sense he's killed no one, never broken a neck or sighted down a rifle barrel at a living body. Men have died in the field because of his orders, but that's not the same. And he's killed no one metaphorically, either. Michael, he's heard through a mutual friend he hopes he won't have to drop for discretion's sake, has found a flat and is coping all right.

"Ask yourself again in twenty years," Prideaux says. "When you've got so used to hiding that you've almost forgotten how much you hate it."

Peter sees a future snapshot, himself at fifty-four, with a bitter smile and broken capillaries in his nose. He looks nearly as bad as Prideaux. "It's stupid to hate necessity."

"But you do." Prideaux reaches over--Peter tenses and wishes his gun were in his jacket instead of under the seat--and touches Peter's tie. "Sky blue. Very pretty. It's your favourite, too, I remember seeing you wear it round the Circus. It's a queer's tie. Roy Bland even said so once, to Bill. 'Clever little bastard, Guillam, but why does he dress like a pansy?' If you'd just put on an ordinary tie, you'd fit right in. But you don't."

"I don't wear this tie to work anymore."

"Ah." That soft but assessing look in Prideaux's eyes is pity. "Yes, things must be tense. Everyone under the microscope."

Peter shrugs. They're not here to talk about him. "Why did you turn yourself in? You've caused a lot of fuss."

"I thought it would be an ending. A kind of ending. No more lies, at least." Prideaux presses his fingers along the dark, creased skin under his eyes. "I nearly shot myself. After . . . after Bill. I was there in the woods with the rifle. But it's complicated, shooting yourself with a rifle. By the time I'd got the preparations done I thought I'd try to live instead. Murder and suicide, it's a bit too much like a bad novel. Wrong ending. None of the endings is right, none of the possible ones."

Peter should be thinking about this, analysing. Prideaux's a problem to be contained. Instead he watches the road closely and tries not to think at all. After a while he looks over and sees that Prideaux is crying silently. His eyes are closed, his body motionless, and only the flow of tears shows he isn't dead.

Damn George Smiley. He could have sent anyone, but he sent Peter.

A few minutes later Peter pulls off the motorway and finds the nearest pub. When Peter returns to the car with a fresh bottle, Prideaux opens it without comment and drinks steadily the rest of the way to London. Peter has to help him up the stairs to the flat, where he curls up on the sofa like a child, face turned towards the cushion. Quietly, to no one in particular, Prideaux says, "I don't think I can go on."

"Get some rest, Jim. Sleep."

Prideaux seems to be asleep already, or at least unconscious, so he doesn't ask what good Peter thinks it will do.

Peter covers him with a blanket and, when that doesn't wake him, lifts his head to put a pillow under it. From this angle, Prideaux looks a little like Michael. Not very--it's just the hairline, and the expression of exhausted despair Peter remembers from that last night--but a little. It seems right that Peter should think of Michael now.

"I loved him," Peter whispers. No, that's a lie. "I love him." Not that it matters anymore. Michael is gone, as irrevocably as Bill Haydon, if less bloodily.

Peter sinks weak-legged onto the floor beside the sofa. Prideaux stirs, and Peter, giving in to an impulse he ought to suppress, kisses him on the temple as he used to do with Michael. With a sigh, Prideaux falls back into sleep. Peter is achingly tempted to hold him, to let himself pretend and Prideaux dream. But another lie will help neither of them.

"I'm going to go on," Peter says. There are no police for what Peter's done, and a gun is too drastic. He will live with it, and that will be punishment enough.



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01/24/12--16:13: too fannish (chan 1930640)

So much I want to do! So little time!

Here's a list, alphabetical by fandom:

1) Listen to the rest of the radio show Cabin Pressure, which I started listening to last night and found unexpectedly awesome. Yes, my new crush Benedict Cumberbatch is in it. He has a sexy gorgeous voice, which although it hasn't yet attained the pinnacle of perfection (i.e. Alan Rickman's voice, and I should note that Cumberbatch does a great Rickman impersonation) should be in that league after another decade or two of mellowing. I wouldn't have thought Cumberbatch could do comedy, but he's awfully good.

2) Rewatch all of Colditz. Write more Colditz fic.

3) Finish what I can only call "the meta RPF story about two people you've never heard of unless you are halotolerant or me."

4) Rewatch all of Sherlock again (skipping most of "the Blind Banker"). Read more Sherlock fic. Write fic about Mycroft, because I love him.

5) Work on a sequel to my Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy movieverse story. The one that had all of about seven readers. The sequel will be long and complex to write.

6) Re-read all the Tintin comics with Haddock in them. Write more Tintin fic. In particular, write porn.


If only I was less lazy didn't need rest . . .



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