Rare Pair Exchange 2025
Aug. 14th, 2025 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blurhawaiidear writer,
i've cast a net pretty wide here. it seems like all of my interests end up being rare pairs so if you frequent exchanges there's a good chance you've seen a lot of these requests before, but i do have a few new ones as well. try not to stress too much, i promise i'll love anything you put your time and effort into. and feel free to ignore my prompts if you have something else in mind, they're only suggestions for if you find yourself stuck. happy creating!
requests:
the departed (2006)
slow horses (tv)
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
from (tv 2022)
24 (tv)
inception (2010)
the last boy scout (1991)
f1 (movie 2025)
jurassic world: chaos theory (cartoon)
general likes:
dysfunctional relationships, codependency, fucked up family dynamics, enemies to lovers, power imbalances, age gaps
unexpected team ups between unlikely characters OR bottle episodes as fic where characters are stuck together in a place/room, unable to leave, forced to work together
vulnerability in men, uncertain and awkward intimacy, UST, slow burns, first times, forehead kisses, emphasis on hands and touch, touch starved characters, tough love as a means of showing affection
canon divergence and what-if fics (as in what if this one thing in canon was different), missing scenes, post-canon, fix-it fics, outsider POV, character studies over plot driven fics, go as weird as you like with the divergence just as long as it still feels in universe
bonding through shared trauma (bonus if that leads to messy codependency), PTSD, redemption arcs, found family tropes, characters that can’t seem to stay away from each other even when they know it's toxic
supernatural horror, magical realism, cosmic horror, body horror, gothic horror, noir tropes, dark humour, monsters of any kind, ghosts, time travel, time loops, doomed characters
size difference, age difference, rough manhandling, competence kink, incompetence kink, loyalty kink, praise kink, pilot kink, clothes sharing, cigarette sharing, character studies as porn, breathplay, clothed sex, rough sex, biting, hair pulling, awkward sex, crying (especially during sex), blunt communication between sexual partners
angst (with or without a happy ending) and hurt/comfort fics (heavy on the hurt)
polyamory (especially when an established couple brings in a third, and the journey towards getting it to work. 2/3 of a poly relationship openly and honestly dicussing the 1/3, bonus if it's in a teasing way during sex
consent issues in terms of characters having sex for reasons that aren’t just straight up attraction, such as for comfort, loneliness, thinking it’s what the other person wants, hero worship, being undercover, previous emotional and personal baggage, a difficult family history leading to messed up dynamics with other parental figures, avoidance of problems or a belief it can fix bigger problems
soulmate, soulmark, and daemon fics
any rating from gen to porn is welcome, as long as characters interactions are the focus
DNWs:
AUs that are completely disconnected from canon e.g. high school and coffee shop AUs
crossovers with other fandoms
genderbending, trans headcanons, and asexual headcanons
extreme feminisation of male characters
fics that are entirely tooth rotting fluff, to the point of being OOC
terminal illness
animal/pet death
A/B/O fics
scat/watersports
mpreg
first person fics, crackfic, chatfic, songfic, and reader inserts
the departed (2006)
*billy costigan/sean dignam
one of my favourite films ever. i request it in every exchange so you can't really go wrong with this. trust me, i will devour anything you write for these two.
my number one love is dignam. i love his filthy mouthed defense of his undercovers (which includes billy) and his obvious loyalty towards the job and his partnership with queenan. i get a lot of enjoyment from how much he seems to hate sullivan on vibes alone. he’s basically got legend status in both the cop world and the criminal world, and i would be very interested in seeing how and why that came to be.
i have a vague headcanon that dignam was once a younger undercover who got out somehow, and since that rarely happens cleanly i can see a lot of potential for a fic that delves into the trauma of that, and how it relates to billy’s time undercover—which definitely DOES NOT end cleanly either.
billy spends the entire film struggling with repressed violent tendencies, crippling isolation, constantly being reminded of and compared to his well-liked father (his uncle and cousin too, but less favourably), and having to juggle various different identities to the point where he doesn’t know which one is real anymore. all of which are themes i would also love to see be explored further.
and obviously i am fascinated by every interaction between these two. from dignam’s attack dog interview tactics, which are fully designed to verbally tenderise billy. dignam expertly reading and needling every one of billy’s weak spots, tearing him down to nothing, ready for queenan’s slightly softer good cop approach meant to reshape him to fit their purpose. to the very rare moments where dignam actually softens too (we need you, pal and my personal favourite why don’t we meet up, sweetheart. let me buy you an ice cream), all leading up to the ultimate loyalty moment of dignam killing sullivan at the end as revenge for billy’s death (and probably queenan's too.)
i have written a couple of departed fics myself, centred around shipping costigan/dignam. but in all honesty, i would be happy with anything involving them both. outright shipping is preferred but whatever you are comfortable with writing is fine. due to the nature of the film, i am perfectly comfortable with physical violence and the screwed up relationship they are bound to have. the friction born of the situation they are in vs the fact that they need each other to get through this very isolating experience is what i am all about.
prompts:
i have already promised my eternal gratitude to a previous gifter during yuletide who wrote me a wonderfully odd fic for this prompt. so i can only offer something lesser like an arm or a leg or my soul if you write me a fic that incorporates the why don’t we meet up, sweetheart. let me buy you an ice cream line. if you can make that happen in-universe, during the time billy is still undercover, my arm and/or leg and/or soul is yours to do with what you wish.
any fic where billy survives is always a winner. whether it centres around the very real consequences of taking a bullet to the head, the recovery period that follows, and the long term future billy is looking down barrel of. OR billy never takes the bullet. maybe dignam shows up in time and the standoff in the elevator goes very differently. OR dignam takes his two week suspension with pay and does something reckless to help his undercover because no one else will.
maybe some kind of role reversal where instead of madolyn being billy’s therapist point of contact outside of both the cop world and the criminal world, billy could show up on dignam’s doorstep looking for some of the world’s worst therapy. if dignam was a previous undercover, it could be a perfect situation for some trauma bonding.
i’ve always been of the opinion that a time loop fic could work well with this. whether it’s billy having the knowledge to avoid his ending (only for an actual good ending still being hard to get), dignam feeling guilty for not answering billy’s calls at the end and wanting to fix both billy’s outcome and queenan’s. OR maybe go really wild and have an outsider POV stuck in a loop, someone striving for their own personal outcome that somehow also benefits billy’s and/or dignam’s fate, like sullivan or queenan.
as i said in my general likes i think some kind of soulmate or daemon fic could be very interesting in a world where undercover work is the setting. billy and dignam having each other’s names on their body could lend itself to some interesting scenarios. just imagine the interview scene with that fact in dignam’s back pocket, or the scene where costello is smashing up billy's cast while looking for a wire. and something about daemons being a true reflection of someone's soul really appeals to me when dropped into these identity issue riddled circumstances. bonus points here if you twist or subvert these tropes into some unusual take on them.
slow horses (tv)
*river cartwright/jackson lamb
so from what i can gather most people seem to view these two purely through the lense of a father/son relationship. and while i definitely see it and agree it’s there, it doesn’t exactly stop me from being interested in the shipping potential. honestly, river’s slew of mother issues, father issues, grandfather issues, and so on… combined with the reluctant hero worship and the unwanted mentor/mentee relationship, the vaguely father/son relationship he has with lamb just makes the whole dynamic way more deliciously dense for me and ripe for the twisted plucking.
i am fascinated by all the history lamb has with river’s grandfather, both the personal and the work related, and how that ultimately affects how he views river. i love the reality of lamb slowly divorcing the preconceptions and assumptions he first has about river being just the grandson of the OB who fucked up majorly on the job, to lamb seeing river as his very own messed up individual who fucked up on the job. BUT ALSO as someone who still continues to do good and always strives to do better. as two opposing characters, i very much enjoy that dichotomy of river working so hard to escape slough house and lamb barely working to stay where he is.
i’m a massive fan of loyalty in characters, especially when they try so hard to hide the fact that they care, so obviously i love lamb’s fierce defense of all his joes, all while constantly berating them and making sure they know that they’re losers. which also brings me to river’s coin flip bouts of competence and incompetence as a spy, both of which delight me in equal measure, just as much as it delights me to see lamb’s reaction to both extremes. on top of that, pretty much any time that river gets roughed up and bloody, i cheer and gleefully drink it up.
i love the spy craft elements of this universe, the blend of the old world and the more modern practises, depending on the generation of spy doing the spying. also, just the unrelenting bureaucracy of the job and how being a slow horse puts them right at the bottom of the totem pole, as i’m always pulling for the underdogs in any story.
i enjoy every other character doomed to work at slough house (particularly river’s work buddie louisa, standish’s motherly concern and her own history with both river and lamb, and shirley just because), along with the more antagonistic characters of taverner, spider, and even duffy. if any one of them were to show up in something here, i would be a-okay with that.
prompts:
as i said above, i do ship it and i would be over the moon to receive a gift that manages to craft a believable, in character reason for these two to fuck. i’m envisioning any one of the scenarios i mentioned in the consent issues paragraph from my general likes. from hero worship reasons, weird comfort, loneliness, spy mission in which they’re stuck together and the safe house only has one bed, what starts as twisted payback for lamb’s hatred of david cartwright turning into something else, whatever you can think of. if you draw attention to the vague father/son and mentor/mentee relationship here, i’ll award bonus points.
if you’re not comfortable writing anything that explicit, i’d be very happy with any fic where river and lamb have to work together in the field for whatever reason. maybe lamb has to come to river’s rescue OR even the reverse of that. and you can’t really go wrong with in media res-ing a situation where river is hurt and lamb is begrudgingly fixing things.
i’ve given a lot of thought to the idea that lamb has known river since he was a young lad, or at least has been aware of him ever since river was left behind in his grandfather’s care. i’m not too sure of the actual timelines, having less familiarity with the books, but i would be very interested in a kind 5+1 fic detailing moments they’ve met before, back when river was just a boy, growing up, leading to him joining the service, and inevitably the mistake that lands him at slough house. i’m not looking for any physical relationship when river is still underage, but i'm fine with implications or toeing of a line, and any time after river joins the service is fair game to me.
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
*augustin jordan/paddy mayne
so paddy as a character is endlessly fascinating to me. he is every possible contradiction housed inside one man. he's foul mouthed and violent yet he treasures books and quotes poetry from memory. he's boyish and oddly sweet faced but hides it behind a sweaty toothed madman beard. he's suicidal and drowning in his own unspeakable grief yet continues to live on and struggle through life anyway. he has entire conversations with his ghosts despite being aggressively practical in all other things. he's a savage mean bitch and yet i love him.
augustin, though, appears to be crazier still because within hours of meeting this clearly insane man he decides to wrestle him half naked in the sand. AND THEN, after having a knife held to his throat and a loaded gun pointed at him, he continues again and again to rise to paddy's bait. augustin talks back, pushes back, bites back. he even seems to enjoy it. and THAT'S what i find so compelling with these two. stirling proposes they might get along since they share a love for books and bloody rhetoric and, low and behold, they actually do (if getting along means butting heads with bared teeth and always coming back for more, which it absolutey does.)
as for the world of the show and how much it differs from true reality, i readily forget these characters are supposedly based on real people, and i think the show pretty much disregards this too. feel free to lean into its more absurd and modern take on the war and its people, i would actually prefer it. i'm mostly here for the homoerotic wrestling, not so much the political commentary.
prompts:
there's so much delicious angst ready to be explored between them. there's eion's ghost, for one. it can't be ignored that augustin is another tall, skinny, dark haired presence at paddy's side, one that's been shown to be not so easily scared away and maybe has the potential to soothe the barking beast inside paddy's head just as eion once did. but the more augustin learns about paddy's grief, the more he may wonder why paddy sometimes looks at him strangely, or lets his hand linger on him a fraction too long.
i adore any and all references to paddy being a mad dog on a leash, only there's no one left around him who is stupid enough to try and pick up the other end. eion dropped it in death and it's tail has been whipping dangerously around and getting snagged on every minor inconvenience ever since. i kind of see paddy as one of those dogs that walks around with its own leash in its mouth. they often choose if and when to put it back in their owner's hand. i'd love something about augustin's many attempts to get close enough to try and tame paddy all the times he's inevitably gotten bitten for it. (literally, if you want!)
their relationship being developed through their lending library of books. would love something where they grow closer by begrudgingly exchanging books, maybe going out of their way to get something they think the other would like, or forcing them to read something they know the other would hate. being able to say what they can’t outloud through book titles, authors and dog-eared passages instead. how that mute and cowardly way of holding a conversation is juxtaposed against two people supposedly so heavily invested in words.
go wild. go supernatural. they both have so many people that haunt them in death and a vast and lonely desert surrounding them. maybe the pressure gets to paddy and he goes off to find eoin’s body again. maybe augustin goes with him, knowing paddy’s willingness to let himself die. maybe they encounter each other’s painful ghosts along their journey.
something set during S2, maybe they still keep in touch via letters. what better way to keep sparring with each other than by sparring with the written word. OR, considering the war takes paddy back to europe and more specifically to france, maybe there's a chance they randomly meet again, now that paddy is this new breed of fucked in the head animal. OR augustin doesn't just vanish between series (or get captured as real life would lead us to believe.) maybe he sticks with the SAS on their return to europe and is around to witness paddy's entire transformation first hand. idk, i'm just so inexplicably obsessed with the idea of augustin getting to see paddy clean shaven and realising oh no, he's actually cute. like, just imagine his inner turmoil.
from (tv)
*jade herrera/kenny liu
*jade herrera/rudra khatri
*rudra khatri/boyd stevens
so jade is my no.1 guy by a mile. he has chemistry with everyone because he rubs everyone the wrong way, and it's this friction that wholeheartedly translates into interesting character dynamics in my eyes. he's gone on such a wild journey in a relatively short span of time in show and i'm equally as enamoured by each stage of his development. spoilt rich guy who thinks he can buy his way out of a VR simulation, check. manic science man who tries to engineer his way out of schrodinger's box, absolutely. depressed and unshaven old man cardigan wearing hobo plagued by visions, i am into it. even the reveal he's some kind of reincarnated town resident who lost his daughter to child sacrifice, he is endlessly fascinating to me because, despite apparently living many lifetimes, he is somehow still the WORST at making a good impression. which, just chef's kiss, my guy. you beautiful loser, you.
more generally, i love the horror tropes of this show. the constant looming threat of the monsters, the confusing mess of shit they keep finding in the woods, being confined inside with relative strangers during the night, the body horror, the teleporting trees, the kimono lady, the looping nature of the roads in and out of town, the forced comradery of having to get along or die, the vague threat of some kind of greater spider god that feeds off dead children which we still haven't seen, lost loved ones coming back as ghosts, hearing voices speaking through electronics, the way coincidences are so frequently occurring and bad, whatever the hell the cromenockle actually is, time travel being very real and possible, generations of child sacrifice, and so on and so on. feel free to make up your own weird shit and throw it into the pot, as nothing seems to be too weird for this show.
as for the pairings, i'm a big believer in the jade/tabitha/jim disaster of a trio from every possible angle and have received many wonderful gifts in the past. but, like i said, i'd love to see some of these other relationships be explored.
prompts:
jade/kenny:
kenny is easily the sweetest and kindest guy in town and all he ever gets in return is misery on top of more misery. to not only lose both of his parents to this town but also have his crush's fiancee miraculously stumble back into the picture...that's rough, buddy. i'd love for kenny to experience some kind of happiness in whatever form it might come.
and honestly i saw so much potential in the beginning for these two to have a more significant relationship. kenny seems to take responsibility of jade in those early days, being the one to push the reality of the situation, showing him tobey's body, giving jade a literal home and sharing his family life with him. they really should have capitalised on this more. with jade's wilder theories being put into practice, i think it would have been balanced well by kenny's more practical voiced protection as the town's deputy. they could have gotten so much shit done as a team. so anything set during that early time would be amazing. plus, i adore jade's relationship with tian-chen and was distraught when she died, so having her still be around to comment on whatever relationship develops really tickles me as an idea.
jade/khatri:
a real missed opportunity here, i think. jade calls him beautiful while high out of his mind, but i can't imagine his opinion would change that much by the time he's sober because he's right, khatri is indeed very hot. khatri also carries an unconscious jade all the way up to colony house, saving his life, and it makes me sad we never got another scene between them where jade learns this and has to be reluctantly greatful. just imagine if khatri gave jade the same kind of welcome speech that donna gives to tabitha, all while jade is still tied to the bed, of course.
khatri's such a wonderful, morally grey character overall, the fact that he's a guilt ridden priest on top of that just makes him that much hotter. he's mysterious, he's funny, he still manages to be creepily preachy while also fully subscribing to the weird twisted logic this town creates. he condones the death penalty for drunken mistakes (a little hypocritical, my guy, but okay), while also tying sara up in his church basement because he believes it will benefit everyone in the long run. (he absolutely would have been okay with sara plucking elgin's eye out because it was for the greater good, and i fully stand by my opinion on this.) khatri is a refreshing voice of reason in a confusing, mind-fuck of a town. or, at least he was, anyway.
when i think about it, the sheer raw power these two characters could have had being snarky bitches at the back of every room, at the sidelines of every important conversation, at the making of every difficult decision, it actually makes me mad not sad that we never got to experience it. and look, they might not have gotten as much shit done as i suspect a jade and kenny team up might have, but damn i bet it would have been deliciously fun just to see it. picturing boyd's reactions alone to this united front fills me with pure joy.
there's some kind of fic percolating in the back of my mind that has to do with tobey and his very quickly forgotten presense in the show. jade lost his best friend of many years when he arrived in town and khatri's a priest whose literal job it is to deal with grief and the passing on of souls. these two facts connect, right? jade DOES NOT strike me as religious or even spiritual, but maybe he still visits tobey's grave at the church where khatri lives, and maybe they cross paths at some point? (i still think about the fact that we never got any kind of revelation or confrontation between jade and sara. he has to know sara killed tobey, right? and well, khatri does have her tied to a chair in his basement at one point...
there’s also the fact that jade is one of the few people who regularly sees ghosts of dead residents in town, so what if he started seeing dead khatri too? dead tom is jade's usual voice of reason, but how would khatri's advice differ?
khatri/boyd:
old man yaoi at it's finest. i've described them in the past as an old man unstoppable force meeting an old man immovable object. i do believe they take turns inhabiting each side of this dichotomy depending on the argument they are having, and is that not just the MOST married behaviour you've ever heard of.
jokes aside, i do find their reluctant leader/morally grey advisor dynamic very compelling. while alive, khatri's firm belief in boyd borders on being sacreligious. right from the very moment boyd arrives in town, khatri is already pushing him to take charge. it's almost as if his shaky faith in god at this time, further compounded by the horrors he's already experienced, has transposed that faith into boyd instead. highly suspicious actions from a priest, i'd say. not beautifully yaoi-like at all. i'd love anything that delves into this weird kind of worship they have going on. why exactly is khatri so certain boyd can succeed in getting them home?
dead khatri is something altogether different simply because we can't be sure what he even is, who he is, and what his motivations might be if it does turn out he's actually a construct created by the town. he still acts like boyd's conscience from what we see, but is that just boyd's hopeful wishing? i tend to lean towards it being some form of the real khatri with his soul/energy being trapped in the ether, unable to move on. but what if it's really more sinister than that? i'd love to see a darker take on it, honestly.
24 (tv)
*tony almeida/jack bauer
*tony almeida/george mason
i was a huge fan of this show back when dvd boxsets were still a thing, and i pretty much wore my sets out watching them on repeat. more recently, it showed up on disney+ and i’ve been reliving my obsession off and on again ever since.
seasons 1-4 were the golden years for me. i continued to watch past that and enjoyed it, but certain events of season 5 (namely: the deaths of tony, michelle and david palmer) were hard for me to get over. i give special dispensation to season 7 because they brought my very special boy tony almeida back as a villain (which i admittedly hated at the time, but have since come to love and really appreciate as a legitimate path for his character to take. more on that below in my prompts.)
it’s so amusing for me to go back to the first season and see tony as this smug, soul patch having loser. a minor character that i’m pretty sure we’re meant to dislike just for the crime of being opposed to jack and nina, all while knowing in the back of my mind the amazing journey his character goes on. just know that i appreciate every era he goes through, even his loser one.
tony manages to stay very dry and sardonic throughout his span on the show, which i adore in a character (to this day, i still mimic his flat yah every time he answers a phone.) he shows that he can hold his own in the field too (heart eyes for all the times tony shows up with a gun at the last second to save the day, like with terri in season 1 and jack and audrey in season 4.) but he’s also savvy enough at the bureaucracy side of things to rise up the ranks to head of CTU. (RIP to george mason, my absolute favourite side character, despite lasting only two seasons. xander berkeley the GOAT.)
i do love tony’s relationship with michelle because i find it fascinating how similar she is to jack at times. the thing with jack and michelle is that they are very much believers of the adage the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the one, which is obviously very important for the job they do. whereas tony is always more interested in saving the singular people he cares about, and ultimately his wife, meaning the few and the one. it’s what leads to his arrest later, tony putting michelle above his country, and that kind of loyalty, him damning of all the consequences, is numero uno in my book.
as for jack, i definitely grew up thinking he was the coolest person alive (i find ways to casually bring up in conversations the moment at the la coliseum when he runs up the wall and snaps that guy’s neck an embarrassing amount.) he’s a one man army, a terminator, endlessly persistent, and yet he still has that much needed empathy left in him to sit in his car at the end of a long day and cry about about having to chop off his partner's hand with a fire axe. he really can do it all. he's an unrelenting force of good is jack bauer, even if that sometimes means doing bad. it's always justfied in his eyes, because it's him. he is a hypocrite a lot of the time but that only serves to make him more flawed and interesting.
there’s an underlying loyalty between these two that starts, i think, from the moment they learn about nina’s status as a mole. the fact that they both slept with her at different times (possibly even overlapping) lends itself to a certain bond going forward. a mutual betrayal building a weird commiserating trust. from there, i love seeing tony become one of the few people at CTU jack trusts pretty implicitly. he entrusts kim’s safety (*sighs* oh, kim) to tony on numerous occasions, to the point where tony and michelle even help jack fake his death. can’t get much more trusting than that.
the 24h clock format for the show really was groundbreaking at the time, and i think it still continues to be a major positive that the show has going for it. i love all the subterfuge and having spies working both sides right under your nose. the quick and sudden violence underscored by the ticking clock. the technology is also hilariously dated at this point too that payphones were a legitimate defense against terrorism and secret agendas. and i love all of that naughties tv drama nonsense.
i do like a lot of their canon relationships as well. depending on the season setting you choose to write in, i’m fine with references to past relationships like tony/michelle, tony/nina, jack/nina, jack/kate, jack/audrey. and despite my requests i'm still very interested in anything exploring tony/jack/michelle and tony/jack/nina, just so long as tony/jack remains the focus.
prompts:
tony/jack:
straight out of prison, depressed and alcoholic tony is a personal favourite of mine. the way jack relays all the sad facts of tony's life to audrey so casually has always blown my mind because it means jack was there at the sidelines to see it all. he even mentions michelle’s side of things, showing that he’s familiar with her post-separation too, like he's been checking up on them both. i once read a post where someone asked: do you think jack was the best man at tony’s wedding? and that question has haunted me ever since. it's also pretty obvious to me that jack cashed in a favour with the president to get tony that pardon from prison and it must bother him to see tony squandering his second chance like that. so anything set around that period would be amazing.
there’s so much potential in a fic set pre-season 3. the whole secret OP that jack, tony and gael organise off the record, which involves getting jack addicted to heroin and in with the salazars. it’s rife for further exploring, maybe something messy and uncomfortably intimate with tony being jack’s only point of contact during this period, and having to deal with his addiction and the realities of him involving himself in that criminal world all behind michelle’s back.
season 7 villain tony. i love the angst jack experiences when learning that tony is still alive. i think the show fumbles tony’s true motivations a little by having him flip flop between real villain, undercover good guy, back to actual villain getting revenge for michelle. if they had picked one and stuck with it all the way, i think it might have worked better. having said that, i can get behind both versions, and would love a fic detailing either paths. especially something post-season 7 that explores jack reaching out to tony while he’s back in custody. OR what if tony succeeded in evading capture? what if he made a strange habit of popping back up in jack's life while on the run?
tony/george:
i'm well aware that this pairing is rare even by rare pair standards, but i recently watched season 2 again and found myself loving every interaction between tony and george. they're the exact same kind of bitchy co-worker who rolls his eyes at you behind your back, and i just know they'd be so fun together. and, god, the tragedy of what george mason goes through during day 2. yes, we were robbed of more time with george but, at the same time, it's THE perfect arc. it's karma. the cowardly asshole gets subjected to the exact same treatment he was trying to run from. it's like poetry, it rhymes. BUT, what blows my mind is how kind tony is with him after he learns about george's radiation poisoning. tony just casually saying i'll keep an eye on him to michelle and then spending half the day propping george up so that he can keep doing his job, for as long as he's able...i'll never get over it. george handing the rank of CTU head guy over the tony before he leaves on his suicide mission come with real respect, i think. i really believe they liked each other but, man, just where did that beautiful loyalty even come from? i'd love to see more of it.
having said that, i’m also weirdly fascinated by the reality of working at CTU during the non-disaster days. the boring, day to day stuff we don’t ever get to see. anything set during one of those days could be really fun. let george and tony bitch about their work and lack of personal lives while standing at the water cooler together. let them get beers after work. let them fall into bed one evening and then never speak of it again. OR, better yet, have george snidely point out how tony has almost filled out his bingo card when it comes to sleeping with his co-workers.
inception (2010)
*dom cobb/saito
*dom cobb/mal cobb/saito
*mal cobb/saito
ah, the unbearable torture of being interested in a rare pair in an otherwise popular fandom. i'll admit, i too was blinded by beautiful tom hardy at the time, BUT THEN it didn't take me long afterwards to fully recognise the true love story in this movie. inception is really about dom cobb accepting his wife is dead, working through his feelings of guilt, and taking those first baby steps into moving on.
throughout the film saito is constantly being framed as the one to help cobb not just get his children back but to finally face his avoidance of dream-sharing where the shade of his dead wife haunts him, all while saito himself is constantly being mirrored by mal's character. the whole repetition of lines, language that is shared only by cobb/mal and cobb/saito: waiting for a train, grow old together, an old man filled with regret waiting to die alone, taking a leap of faith, we'll be young men together. like how the hell am i supposed to witness all that and not draw thematic lines between mal and saito? the opening scene literally has them teaming up, with cobb's projection of mal being immediately trusted in saito's mind. it all just makes me crazy.
there's also the fact that mal's spinning top totem travels between them all throughout the film, something that in-universe is supposed to be a singularly personal item, further tying them together.
prompts:
anything set post film - the reality of having lived through many lifetimes catches up to them, whether that’s still not believing in their reality or just a general fatigue of the real word, cobb’s fear of having incepted saito with the same feelings of unreality as mal that then leads to them keeping in touch.
a fic following the journey of mal’s totem passing through the hands of all three of them.
anything set during the opening, how did mal’s projection get saito to trust her so quickly, what if things went differently. OR, what if mal’s projection went with cobb to rescue saito from limbo, all three of them ending up back in that room from the opening.
the last boy scout (1991)
*joe hallenbeck/jimmy dix
to the people who have never seen this film, to put it in quick context: i tend to class it as the third film in the shane black trilogy, alongside the greats that are kiss kiss bang bang and the nice guys. it shares basically all the same tropes you most likely know and love from them, but is set in the 90s instead. and i’ve always wondered why the last boy scout is often overlooked when it’s arguably just as memorable.
specific likes:
the extended shane black buddy action/comedy universe | weird male bonding | noir stories & private detectives | dry humour | unusual partnerships working together for a common goal | found family tropes | darian swearing | adults not talking down to kids | extended bits performed through hand puppets | two guys against the entire government | beating up and getting beaten up by goons | darian inviting herself into investigations | satan clause | cheesy one liners | comedic violence | serious violence | hero worship | collecting football cards of some guy you know irl | the hallenbeck’s adopting jimmy dix into their lives post film
prompts:
for real, i would be happy with anything here as there isn’t a single fic for this film. this could be anything set during the film, a canon divergence, or something set after the film that explores their new private detective partnership, and a world where the hallenbeck family do indeed keep jimmy dix around.
f1 (movie 2025)
*sonny hayes/joshua pearce
*sonny hayes/sergio perez
formula 1 has been a staple in my house since i was a kid. i only became seriously interested myself when rush came out in 2016, and i've been watching it ever since. i'm no expert but i'd say i know a little more about the sport than the layman fast car movie goer. basically, what i mean to say is, i fully know this movie is complete and utter bullshit and that's okay. sure, if APX tried even half of these tactics for real, sonny hayes would have been publically executed by the FIA long before the season ended. that said, i don't particularly care about depicting realism and i live for the drama. i love underdog sports movies, as well as stories about second chances. i love mentor/mentee dynamics, especially when the lines begin to blur in a sexual relationship. there's also something to be said about people who don't really like each other being forced to work together in what is a very dangerous career choice. crashes and injuries are fine to explore, as this is fiction. i also think that writing something in this world allows for some unusual focuses, such as the in-universe televised aspect of it. press conferences, post race interviews and dumb contracted PR bonding sessions lend themselves to fun scenarios, maybe even some kind of outsider POV fic.
prompts:
hayes/pearce:
so i was a little surprised by how antagonistic they wrote their partnership to be. surprised, but ultimately delighted. the massive age gap not only highlights their differences as people, but as drivers as well. i really enjoy the friction they have from the very beginning, and even during the times hayes is genuinely trying to offer the kid legitimate advice. it's all about eventually earning the other guy's respect. and while i do think it would have made more sense for pearce to be the one to get their maiden win, with hayes doing all his underhanded shit as a means to get them most of the way there, i understand why the movie ends the way it does. BUT what if the roles were reversed and pearce did win?
kinda highly suspiciously gay to stay up all night obsessively watching your new teammate's old races. young and baby faced, pretty boy hayes must have left an impression on pearce, right? so what if he developed a crush and was extremely mad about it?
i do hate the trend where characters feel the need to split up or move on at the end of the movie. so, what if hayes didn't immediately abandon the team he helped keep alive for a few more years? what would the next season be like with this more compatible partnership?
hayes/perez:
i'll be honest, i just saw this was already in the movie's tagset and was compelled to request it. i'm a big fan of perez in irl formula 1 and i got a real kick out of seeing him cameo in the movie. going off my vague memories of watching it like a month ago, it's blink and you'll miss it territory, but i do seem to remember a battle on track between them, with perez defending hard against sonny. defending is one of perez's great talents and with the way the APX team race while pretty much disregarding all the rules, i just think perez being a constant roadblock in the road is incredibly funny. so, idk, i'm mostly recalling magnussen's famous suck my balls, honey quote, and while i can't picture perez ever being that rude, a more light hearted rivaly on and off track could be fun.
OR because perez is out of the sport too now thanks to red bull's shitty second driver car, maybe he runs into sonny at different motorsport race and they bond over getting out of that intense environment, only for them both to admit really missing it. then they bang or something, idk.
jurassic world: chaos theory (cartoon)
*darius bowman/kenji kon
*brooklyn/darius bowman/kenji kon
so i've really enjoyed getting to see these older versions of the characters as well as the more mature storylines that explore things like death and grief, emotional neglect and abandonment issues, ptsd, coming to terms with and adapting to a new disability, depression and suicide, and so much more.
so often when shows jump time like this it feels as though nothing has changed, like the status quo is the same, or the character were frozen in place between shows. but that's not the case here, there's so much character evolution right off the bat. and while i don't particularly like the jurassic world trilogy, i do enjoy the concept of wild dinosaurs being intergrated into the rest of the world, for better and for worse, so i'm glad that's carried over into the show at least. that said, i definitely enjoy the emotional character arcs more than the grander dinosaur conspiracy plot.
i really love where they've taken kenji's character so far. i liked him fine as the goofy rich kid who was somewhat naive about the horrible way his dad treated him. he was very obviously bravadoing his way through his trauma, trying to ignore it for what it really was. BUT i love him even more now that he's finally acknowledging the truth and choosing to cut ties with his father, instead attempting to build his own life and independence. he's still goofy, but now it's masking a deep depression and near obsession with keeping his friends safe, to point that he's willing to die for it, and that's definitely more my jam. the arrival of smoothie has definitely helped him to reach a more positive place, but i still like that brooklyn's betrayal has permenantly changed him.
darius is still the firm backbone of the group despite being the youngest. he's brave, kind, rightous to a fault, and even after experiencing what they all did on the island is still somehow a true patron to all dinosaurs. but i really like that he was able to have his own emotional response to brooklyn, with his own very specific feelings. he was forced to experience real doubt in his friends for the first time during this series and i find that reaction so incredibly interesting and ripe for exploring.
as for the rest of the nublar 6, yas is by far my favourite. i love her connection with kenji and the way she immediately clocks what he's going through. loyalty and the happiness of her friends is what's most important, traits which really align with kenji's ongoing arc.
darius/kenji:
okay, so i really don't see it as the untouchable brotherly relationship that most other people seem to. i know kenji found a place in darius' family following their time on the island, but i never took that as a literal adoption, more that it was just a safe place for kenji as friends. found family can still very much be a thing, but i think closing all doors on a possible deeper relationship forming from closeness is something that happens time and time ago in other examples.
i love that they were close during that time though, in a way the others weren't necessarily. it makes the fallout after brooklyn's apparent death all that more painful and rich in angst. there's a bond that's shared between two people who love the same person and were both betrayed by them too.
brooklyn/darius/kenji:
i was almost disappointed when they revealed brooklyn was alive because i was really enjoying the fallout, the way it created friction between darius and kenji. layers and layers of delicious blame and guilt and hurt. i eat all of that up happily. but, on the other hand, it turns out there's just as much delicious angst from the betrayal and mistrust surrounding the reveal that i did end up loving that too for different reasons.
anyway, my answer to love triangles is always to smoosh all three people together.
i've cast a net pretty wide here. it seems like all of my interests end up being rare pairs so if you frequent exchanges there's a good chance you've seen a lot of these requests before, but i do have a few new ones as well. try not to stress too much, i promise i'll love anything you put your time and effort into. and feel free to ignore my prompts if you have something else in mind, they're only suggestions for if you find yourself stuck. happy creating!
requests:
the departed (2006)
slow horses (tv)
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
from (tv 2022)
24 (tv)
inception (2010)
the last boy scout (1991)
f1 (movie 2025)
jurassic world: chaos theory (cartoon)
general likes:
dysfunctional relationships, codependency, fucked up family dynamics, enemies to lovers, power imbalances, age gaps
unexpected team ups between unlikely characters OR bottle episodes as fic where characters are stuck together in a place/room, unable to leave, forced to work together
vulnerability in men, uncertain and awkward intimacy, UST, slow burns, first times, forehead kisses, emphasis on hands and touch, touch starved characters, tough love as a means of showing affection
canon divergence and what-if fics (as in what if this one thing in canon was different), missing scenes, post-canon, fix-it fics, outsider POV, character studies over plot driven fics, go as weird as you like with the divergence just as long as it still feels in universe
bonding through shared trauma (bonus if that leads to messy codependency), PTSD, redemption arcs, found family tropes, characters that can’t seem to stay away from each other even when they know it's toxic
supernatural horror, magical realism, cosmic horror, body horror, gothic horror, noir tropes, dark humour, monsters of any kind, ghosts, time travel, time loops, doomed characters
size difference, age difference, rough manhandling, competence kink, incompetence kink, loyalty kink, praise kink, pilot kink, clothes sharing, cigarette sharing, character studies as porn, breathplay, clothed sex, rough sex, biting, hair pulling, awkward sex, crying (especially during sex), blunt communication between sexual partners
angst (with or without a happy ending) and hurt/comfort fics (heavy on the hurt)
polyamory (especially when an established couple brings in a third, and the journey towards getting it to work. 2/3 of a poly relationship openly and honestly dicussing the 1/3, bonus if it's in a teasing way during sex
consent issues in terms of characters having sex for reasons that aren’t just straight up attraction, such as for comfort, loneliness, thinking it’s what the other person wants, hero worship, being undercover, previous emotional and personal baggage, a difficult family history leading to messed up dynamics with other parental figures, avoidance of problems or a belief it can fix bigger problems
soulmate, soulmark, and daemon fics
any rating from gen to porn is welcome, as long as characters interactions are the focus
DNWs:
AUs that are completely disconnected from canon e.g. high school and coffee shop AUs
crossovers with other fandoms
genderbending, trans headcanons, and asexual headcanons
extreme feminisation of male characters
fics that are entirely tooth rotting fluff, to the point of being OOC
terminal illness
animal/pet death
A/B/O fics
scat/watersports
mpreg
first person fics, crackfic, chatfic, songfic, and reader inserts
the departed (2006)
*billy costigan/sean dignam
one of my favourite films ever. i request it in every exchange so you can't really go wrong with this. trust me, i will devour anything you write for these two.
my number one love is dignam. i love his filthy mouthed defense of his undercovers (which includes billy) and his obvious loyalty towards the job and his partnership with queenan. i get a lot of enjoyment from how much he seems to hate sullivan on vibes alone. he’s basically got legend status in both the cop world and the criminal world, and i would be very interested in seeing how and why that came to be.
i have a vague headcanon that dignam was once a younger undercover who got out somehow, and since that rarely happens cleanly i can see a lot of potential for a fic that delves into the trauma of that, and how it relates to billy’s time undercover—which definitely DOES NOT end cleanly either.
billy spends the entire film struggling with repressed violent tendencies, crippling isolation, constantly being reminded of and compared to his well-liked father (his uncle and cousin too, but less favourably), and having to juggle various different identities to the point where he doesn’t know which one is real anymore. all of which are themes i would also love to see be explored further.
and obviously i am fascinated by every interaction between these two. from dignam’s attack dog interview tactics, which are fully designed to verbally tenderise billy. dignam expertly reading and needling every one of billy’s weak spots, tearing him down to nothing, ready for queenan’s slightly softer good cop approach meant to reshape him to fit their purpose. to the very rare moments where dignam actually softens too (we need you, pal and my personal favourite why don’t we meet up, sweetheart. let me buy you an ice cream), all leading up to the ultimate loyalty moment of dignam killing sullivan at the end as revenge for billy’s death (and probably queenan's too.)
i have written a couple of departed fics myself, centred around shipping costigan/dignam. but in all honesty, i would be happy with anything involving them both. outright shipping is preferred but whatever you are comfortable with writing is fine. due to the nature of the film, i am perfectly comfortable with physical violence and the screwed up relationship they are bound to have. the friction born of the situation they are in vs the fact that they need each other to get through this very isolating experience is what i am all about.
prompts:
i have already promised my eternal gratitude to a previous gifter during yuletide who wrote me a wonderfully odd fic for this prompt. so i can only offer something lesser like an arm or a leg or my soul if you write me a fic that incorporates the why don’t we meet up, sweetheart. let me buy you an ice cream line. if you can make that happen in-universe, during the time billy is still undercover, my arm and/or leg and/or soul is yours to do with what you wish.
any fic where billy survives is always a winner. whether it centres around the very real consequences of taking a bullet to the head, the recovery period that follows, and the long term future billy is looking down barrel of. OR billy never takes the bullet. maybe dignam shows up in time and the standoff in the elevator goes very differently. OR dignam takes his two week suspension with pay and does something reckless to help his undercover because no one else will.
maybe some kind of role reversal where instead of madolyn being billy’s therapist point of contact outside of both the cop world and the criminal world, billy could show up on dignam’s doorstep looking for some of the world’s worst therapy. if dignam was a previous undercover, it could be a perfect situation for some trauma bonding.
i’ve always been of the opinion that a time loop fic could work well with this. whether it’s billy having the knowledge to avoid his ending (only for an actual good ending still being hard to get), dignam feeling guilty for not answering billy’s calls at the end and wanting to fix both billy’s outcome and queenan’s. OR maybe go really wild and have an outsider POV stuck in a loop, someone striving for their own personal outcome that somehow also benefits billy’s and/or dignam’s fate, like sullivan or queenan.
as i said in my general likes i think some kind of soulmate or daemon fic could be very interesting in a world where undercover work is the setting. billy and dignam having each other’s names on their body could lend itself to some interesting scenarios. just imagine the interview scene with that fact in dignam’s back pocket, or the scene where costello is smashing up billy's cast while looking for a wire. and something about daemons being a true reflection of someone's soul really appeals to me when dropped into these identity issue riddled circumstances. bonus points here if you twist or subvert these tropes into some unusual take on them.
slow horses (tv)
*river cartwright/jackson lamb
so from what i can gather most people seem to view these two purely through the lense of a father/son relationship. and while i definitely see it and agree it’s there, it doesn’t exactly stop me from being interested in the shipping potential. honestly, river’s slew of mother issues, father issues, grandfather issues, and so on… combined with the reluctant hero worship and the unwanted mentor/mentee relationship, the vaguely father/son relationship he has with lamb just makes the whole dynamic way more deliciously dense for me and ripe for the twisted plucking.
i am fascinated by all the history lamb has with river’s grandfather, both the personal and the work related, and how that ultimately affects how he views river. i love the reality of lamb slowly divorcing the preconceptions and assumptions he first has about river being just the grandson of the OB who fucked up majorly on the job, to lamb seeing river as his very own messed up individual who fucked up on the job. BUT ALSO as someone who still continues to do good and always strives to do better. as two opposing characters, i very much enjoy that dichotomy of river working so hard to escape slough house and lamb barely working to stay where he is.
i’m a massive fan of loyalty in characters, especially when they try so hard to hide the fact that they care, so obviously i love lamb’s fierce defense of all his joes, all while constantly berating them and making sure they know that they’re losers. which also brings me to river’s coin flip bouts of competence and incompetence as a spy, both of which delight me in equal measure, just as much as it delights me to see lamb’s reaction to both extremes. on top of that, pretty much any time that river gets roughed up and bloody, i cheer and gleefully drink it up.
i love the spy craft elements of this universe, the blend of the old world and the more modern practises, depending on the generation of spy doing the spying. also, just the unrelenting bureaucracy of the job and how being a slow horse puts them right at the bottom of the totem pole, as i’m always pulling for the underdogs in any story.
i enjoy every other character doomed to work at slough house (particularly river’s work buddie louisa, standish’s motherly concern and her own history with both river and lamb, and shirley just because), along with the more antagonistic characters of taverner, spider, and even duffy. if any one of them were to show up in something here, i would be a-okay with that.
prompts:
as i said above, i do ship it and i would be over the moon to receive a gift that manages to craft a believable, in character reason for these two to fuck. i’m envisioning any one of the scenarios i mentioned in the consent issues paragraph from my general likes. from hero worship reasons, weird comfort, loneliness, spy mission in which they’re stuck together and the safe house only has one bed, what starts as twisted payback for lamb’s hatred of david cartwright turning into something else, whatever you can think of. if you draw attention to the vague father/son and mentor/mentee relationship here, i’ll award bonus points.
if you’re not comfortable writing anything that explicit, i’d be very happy with any fic where river and lamb have to work together in the field for whatever reason. maybe lamb has to come to river’s rescue OR even the reverse of that. and you can’t really go wrong with in media res-ing a situation where river is hurt and lamb is begrudgingly fixing things.
i’ve given a lot of thought to the idea that lamb has known river since he was a young lad, or at least has been aware of him ever since river was left behind in his grandfather’s care. i’m not too sure of the actual timelines, having less familiarity with the books, but i would be very interested in a kind 5+1 fic detailing moments they’ve met before, back when river was just a boy, growing up, leading to him joining the service, and inevitably the mistake that lands him at slough house. i’m not looking for any physical relationship when river is still underage, but i'm fine with implications or toeing of a line, and any time after river joins the service is fair game to me.
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
*augustin jordan/paddy mayne
so paddy as a character is endlessly fascinating to me. he is every possible contradiction housed inside one man. he's foul mouthed and violent yet he treasures books and quotes poetry from memory. he's boyish and oddly sweet faced but hides it behind a sweaty toothed madman beard. he's suicidal and drowning in his own unspeakable grief yet continues to live on and struggle through life anyway. he has entire conversations with his ghosts despite being aggressively practical in all other things. he's a savage mean bitch and yet i love him.
augustin, though, appears to be crazier still because within hours of meeting this clearly insane man he decides to wrestle him half naked in the sand. AND THEN, after having a knife held to his throat and a loaded gun pointed at him, he continues again and again to rise to paddy's bait. augustin talks back, pushes back, bites back. he even seems to enjoy it. and THAT'S what i find so compelling with these two. stirling proposes they might get along since they share a love for books and bloody rhetoric and, low and behold, they actually do (if getting along means butting heads with bared teeth and always coming back for more, which it absolutey does.)
as for the world of the show and how much it differs from true reality, i readily forget these characters are supposedly based on real people, and i think the show pretty much disregards this too. feel free to lean into its more absurd and modern take on the war and its people, i would actually prefer it. i'm mostly here for the homoerotic wrestling, not so much the political commentary.
prompts:
there's so much delicious angst ready to be explored between them. there's eion's ghost, for one. it can't be ignored that augustin is another tall, skinny, dark haired presence at paddy's side, one that's been shown to be not so easily scared away and maybe has the potential to soothe the barking beast inside paddy's head just as eion once did. but the more augustin learns about paddy's grief, the more he may wonder why paddy sometimes looks at him strangely, or lets his hand linger on him a fraction too long.
i adore any and all references to paddy being a mad dog on a leash, only there's no one left around him who is stupid enough to try and pick up the other end. eion dropped it in death and it's tail has been whipping dangerously around and getting snagged on every minor inconvenience ever since. i kind of see paddy as one of those dogs that walks around with its own leash in its mouth. they often choose if and when to put it back in their owner's hand. i'd love something about augustin's many attempts to get close enough to try and tame paddy all the times he's inevitably gotten bitten for it. (literally, if you want!)
their relationship being developed through their lending library of books. would love something where they grow closer by begrudgingly exchanging books, maybe going out of their way to get something they think the other would like, or forcing them to read something they know the other would hate. being able to say what they can’t outloud through book titles, authors and dog-eared passages instead. how that mute and cowardly way of holding a conversation is juxtaposed against two people supposedly so heavily invested in words.
go wild. go supernatural. they both have so many people that haunt them in death and a vast and lonely desert surrounding them. maybe the pressure gets to paddy and he goes off to find eoin’s body again. maybe augustin goes with him, knowing paddy’s willingness to let himself die. maybe they encounter each other’s painful ghosts along their journey.
something set during S2, maybe they still keep in touch via letters. what better way to keep sparring with each other than by sparring with the written word. OR, considering the war takes paddy back to europe and more specifically to france, maybe there's a chance they randomly meet again, now that paddy is this new breed of fucked in the head animal. OR augustin doesn't just vanish between series (or get captured as real life would lead us to believe.) maybe he sticks with the SAS on their return to europe and is around to witness paddy's entire transformation first hand. idk, i'm just so inexplicably obsessed with the idea of augustin getting to see paddy clean shaven and realising oh no, he's actually cute. like, just imagine his inner turmoil.
from (tv)
*jade herrera/kenny liu
*jade herrera/rudra khatri
*rudra khatri/boyd stevens
so jade is my no.1 guy by a mile. he has chemistry with everyone because he rubs everyone the wrong way, and it's this friction that wholeheartedly translates into interesting character dynamics in my eyes. he's gone on such a wild journey in a relatively short span of time in show and i'm equally as enamoured by each stage of his development. spoilt rich guy who thinks he can buy his way out of a VR simulation, check. manic science man who tries to engineer his way out of schrodinger's box, absolutely. depressed and unshaven old man cardigan wearing hobo plagued by visions, i am into it. even the reveal he's some kind of reincarnated town resident who lost his daughter to child sacrifice, he is endlessly fascinating to me because, despite apparently living many lifetimes, he is somehow still the WORST at making a good impression. which, just chef's kiss, my guy. you beautiful loser, you.
more generally, i love the horror tropes of this show. the constant looming threat of the monsters, the confusing mess of shit they keep finding in the woods, being confined inside with relative strangers during the night, the body horror, the teleporting trees, the kimono lady, the looping nature of the roads in and out of town, the forced comradery of having to get along or die, the vague threat of some kind of greater spider god that feeds off dead children which we still haven't seen, lost loved ones coming back as ghosts, hearing voices speaking through electronics, the way coincidences are so frequently occurring and bad, whatever the hell the cromenockle actually is, time travel being very real and possible, generations of child sacrifice, and so on and so on. feel free to make up your own weird shit and throw it into the pot, as nothing seems to be too weird for this show.
as for the pairings, i'm a big believer in the jade/tabitha/jim disaster of a trio from every possible angle and have received many wonderful gifts in the past. but, like i said, i'd love to see some of these other relationships be explored.
prompts:
jade/kenny:
kenny is easily the sweetest and kindest guy in town and all he ever gets in return is misery on top of more misery. to not only lose both of his parents to this town but also have his crush's fiancee miraculously stumble back into the picture...that's rough, buddy. i'd love for kenny to experience some kind of happiness in whatever form it might come.
and honestly i saw so much potential in the beginning for these two to have a more significant relationship. kenny seems to take responsibility of jade in those early days, being the one to push the reality of the situation, showing him tobey's body, giving jade a literal home and sharing his family life with him. they really should have capitalised on this more. with jade's wilder theories being put into practice, i think it would have been balanced well by kenny's more practical voiced protection as the town's deputy. they could have gotten so much shit done as a team. so anything set during that early time would be amazing. plus, i adore jade's relationship with tian-chen and was distraught when she died, so having her still be around to comment on whatever relationship develops really tickles me as an idea.
jade/khatri:
a real missed opportunity here, i think. jade calls him beautiful while high out of his mind, but i can't imagine his opinion would change that much by the time he's sober because he's right, khatri is indeed very hot. khatri also carries an unconscious jade all the way up to colony house, saving his life, and it makes me sad we never got another scene between them where jade learns this and has to be reluctantly greatful. just imagine if khatri gave jade the same kind of welcome speech that donna gives to tabitha, all while jade is still tied to the bed, of course.
khatri's such a wonderful, morally grey character overall, the fact that he's a guilt ridden priest on top of that just makes him that much hotter. he's mysterious, he's funny, he still manages to be creepily preachy while also fully subscribing to the weird twisted logic this town creates. he condones the death penalty for drunken mistakes (a little hypocritical, my guy, but okay), while also tying sara up in his church basement because he believes it will benefit everyone in the long run. (he absolutely would have been okay with sara plucking elgin's eye out because it was for the greater good, and i fully stand by my opinion on this.) khatri is a refreshing voice of reason in a confusing, mind-fuck of a town. or, at least he was, anyway.
when i think about it, the sheer raw power these two characters could have had being snarky bitches at the back of every room, at the sidelines of every important conversation, at the making of every difficult decision, it actually makes me mad not sad that we never got to experience it. and look, they might not have gotten as much shit done as i suspect a jade and kenny team up might have, but damn i bet it would have been deliciously fun just to see it. picturing boyd's reactions alone to this united front fills me with pure joy.
there's some kind of fic percolating in the back of my mind that has to do with tobey and his very quickly forgotten presense in the show. jade lost his best friend of many years when he arrived in town and khatri's a priest whose literal job it is to deal with grief and the passing on of souls. these two facts connect, right? jade DOES NOT strike me as religious or even spiritual, but maybe he still visits tobey's grave at the church where khatri lives, and maybe they cross paths at some point? (i still think about the fact that we never got any kind of revelation or confrontation between jade and sara. he has to know sara killed tobey, right? and well, khatri does have her tied to a chair in his basement at one point...
there’s also the fact that jade is one of the few people who regularly sees ghosts of dead residents in town, so what if he started seeing dead khatri too? dead tom is jade's usual voice of reason, but how would khatri's advice differ?
khatri/boyd:
old man yaoi at it's finest. i've described them in the past as an old man unstoppable force meeting an old man immovable object. i do believe they take turns inhabiting each side of this dichotomy depending on the argument they are having, and is that not just the MOST married behaviour you've ever heard of.
jokes aside, i do find their reluctant leader/morally grey advisor dynamic very compelling. while alive, khatri's firm belief in boyd borders on being sacreligious. right from the very moment boyd arrives in town, khatri is already pushing him to take charge. it's almost as if his shaky faith in god at this time, further compounded by the horrors he's already experienced, has transposed that faith into boyd instead. highly suspicious actions from a priest, i'd say. not beautifully yaoi-like at all. i'd love anything that delves into this weird kind of worship they have going on. why exactly is khatri so certain boyd can succeed in getting them home?
dead khatri is something altogether different simply because we can't be sure what he even is, who he is, and what his motivations might be if it does turn out he's actually a construct created by the town. he still acts like boyd's conscience from what we see, but is that just boyd's hopeful wishing? i tend to lean towards it being some form of the real khatri with his soul/energy being trapped in the ether, unable to move on. but what if it's really more sinister than that? i'd love to see a darker take on it, honestly.
24 (tv)
*tony almeida/jack bauer
*tony almeida/george mason
i was a huge fan of this show back when dvd boxsets were still a thing, and i pretty much wore my sets out watching them on repeat. more recently, it showed up on disney+ and i’ve been reliving my obsession off and on again ever since.
seasons 1-4 were the golden years for me. i continued to watch past that and enjoyed it, but certain events of season 5 (namely: the deaths of tony, michelle and david palmer) were hard for me to get over. i give special dispensation to season 7 because they brought my very special boy tony almeida back as a villain (which i admittedly hated at the time, but have since come to love and really appreciate as a legitimate path for his character to take. more on that below in my prompts.)
it’s so amusing for me to go back to the first season and see tony as this smug, soul patch having loser. a minor character that i’m pretty sure we’re meant to dislike just for the crime of being opposed to jack and nina, all while knowing in the back of my mind the amazing journey his character goes on. just know that i appreciate every era he goes through, even his loser one.
tony manages to stay very dry and sardonic throughout his span on the show, which i adore in a character (to this day, i still mimic his flat yah every time he answers a phone.) he shows that he can hold his own in the field too (heart eyes for all the times tony shows up with a gun at the last second to save the day, like with terri in season 1 and jack and audrey in season 4.) but he’s also savvy enough at the bureaucracy side of things to rise up the ranks to head of CTU. (RIP to george mason, my absolute favourite side character, despite lasting only two seasons. xander berkeley the GOAT.)
i do love tony’s relationship with michelle because i find it fascinating how similar she is to jack at times. the thing with jack and michelle is that they are very much believers of the adage the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the one, which is obviously very important for the job they do. whereas tony is always more interested in saving the singular people he cares about, and ultimately his wife, meaning the few and the one. it’s what leads to his arrest later, tony putting michelle above his country, and that kind of loyalty, him damning of all the consequences, is numero uno in my book.
as for jack, i definitely grew up thinking he was the coolest person alive (i find ways to casually bring up in conversations the moment at the la coliseum when he runs up the wall and snaps that guy’s neck an embarrassing amount.) he’s a one man army, a terminator, endlessly persistent, and yet he still has that much needed empathy left in him to sit in his car at the end of a long day and cry about about having to chop off his partner's hand with a fire axe. he really can do it all. he's an unrelenting force of good is jack bauer, even if that sometimes means doing bad. it's always justfied in his eyes, because it's him. he is a hypocrite a lot of the time but that only serves to make him more flawed and interesting.
there’s an underlying loyalty between these two that starts, i think, from the moment they learn about nina’s status as a mole. the fact that they both slept with her at different times (possibly even overlapping) lends itself to a certain bond going forward. a mutual betrayal building a weird commiserating trust. from there, i love seeing tony become one of the few people at CTU jack trusts pretty implicitly. he entrusts kim’s safety (*sighs* oh, kim) to tony on numerous occasions, to the point where tony and michelle even help jack fake his death. can’t get much more trusting than that.
the 24h clock format for the show really was groundbreaking at the time, and i think it still continues to be a major positive that the show has going for it. i love all the subterfuge and having spies working both sides right under your nose. the quick and sudden violence underscored by the ticking clock. the technology is also hilariously dated at this point too that payphones were a legitimate defense against terrorism and secret agendas. and i love all of that naughties tv drama nonsense.
i do like a lot of their canon relationships as well. depending on the season setting you choose to write in, i’m fine with references to past relationships like tony/michelle, tony/nina, jack/nina, jack/kate, jack/audrey. and despite my requests i'm still very interested in anything exploring tony/jack/michelle and tony/jack/nina, just so long as tony/jack remains the focus.
prompts:
tony/jack:
straight out of prison, depressed and alcoholic tony is a personal favourite of mine. the way jack relays all the sad facts of tony's life to audrey so casually has always blown my mind because it means jack was there at the sidelines to see it all. he even mentions michelle’s side of things, showing that he’s familiar with her post-separation too, like he's been checking up on them both. i once read a post where someone asked: do you think jack was the best man at tony’s wedding? and that question has haunted me ever since. it's also pretty obvious to me that jack cashed in a favour with the president to get tony that pardon from prison and it must bother him to see tony squandering his second chance like that. so anything set around that period would be amazing.
there’s so much potential in a fic set pre-season 3. the whole secret OP that jack, tony and gael organise off the record, which involves getting jack addicted to heroin and in with the salazars. it’s rife for further exploring, maybe something messy and uncomfortably intimate with tony being jack’s only point of contact during this period, and having to deal with his addiction and the realities of him involving himself in that criminal world all behind michelle’s back.
season 7 villain tony. i love the angst jack experiences when learning that tony is still alive. i think the show fumbles tony’s true motivations a little by having him flip flop between real villain, undercover good guy, back to actual villain getting revenge for michelle. if they had picked one and stuck with it all the way, i think it might have worked better. having said that, i can get behind both versions, and would love a fic detailing either paths. especially something post-season 7 that explores jack reaching out to tony while he’s back in custody. OR what if tony succeeded in evading capture? what if he made a strange habit of popping back up in jack's life while on the run?
tony/george:
i'm well aware that this pairing is rare even by rare pair standards, but i recently watched season 2 again and found myself loving every interaction between tony and george. they're the exact same kind of bitchy co-worker who rolls his eyes at you behind your back, and i just know they'd be so fun together. and, god, the tragedy of what george mason goes through during day 2. yes, we were robbed of more time with george but, at the same time, it's THE perfect arc. it's karma. the cowardly asshole gets subjected to the exact same treatment he was trying to run from. it's like poetry, it rhymes. BUT, what blows my mind is how kind tony is with him after he learns about george's radiation poisoning. tony just casually saying i'll keep an eye on him to michelle and then spending half the day propping george up so that he can keep doing his job, for as long as he's able...i'll never get over it. george handing the rank of CTU head guy over the tony before he leaves on his suicide mission come with real respect, i think. i really believe they liked each other but, man, just where did that beautiful loyalty even come from? i'd love to see more of it.
having said that, i’m also weirdly fascinated by the reality of working at CTU during the non-disaster days. the boring, day to day stuff we don’t ever get to see. anything set during one of those days could be really fun. let george and tony bitch about their work and lack of personal lives while standing at the water cooler together. let them get beers after work. let them fall into bed one evening and then never speak of it again. OR, better yet, have george snidely point out how tony has almost filled out his bingo card when it comes to sleeping with his co-workers.
inception (2010)
*dom cobb/saito
*dom cobb/mal cobb/saito
*mal cobb/saito
ah, the unbearable torture of being interested in a rare pair in an otherwise popular fandom. i'll admit, i too was blinded by beautiful tom hardy at the time, BUT THEN it didn't take me long afterwards to fully recognise the true love story in this movie. inception is really about dom cobb accepting his wife is dead, working through his feelings of guilt, and taking those first baby steps into moving on.
throughout the film saito is constantly being framed as the one to help cobb not just get his children back but to finally face his avoidance of dream-sharing where the shade of his dead wife haunts him, all while saito himself is constantly being mirrored by mal's character. the whole repetition of lines, language that is shared only by cobb/mal and cobb/saito: waiting for a train, grow old together, an old man filled with regret waiting to die alone, taking a leap of faith, we'll be young men together. like how the hell am i supposed to witness all that and not draw thematic lines between mal and saito? the opening scene literally has them teaming up, with cobb's projection of mal being immediately trusted in saito's mind. it all just makes me crazy.
there's also the fact that mal's spinning top totem travels between them all throughout the film, something that in-universe is supposed to be a singularly personal item, further tying them together.
prompts:
anything set post film - the reality of having lived through many lifetimes catches up to them, whether that’s still not believing in their reality or just a general fatigue of the real word, cobb’s fear of having incepted saito with the same feelings of unreality as mal that then leads to them keeping in touch.
a fic following the journey of mal’s totem passing through the hands of all three of them.
anything set during the opening, how did mal’s projection get saito to trust her so quickly, what if things went differently. OR, what if mal’s projection went with cobb to rescue saito from limbo, all three of them ending up back in that room from the opening.
the last boy scout (1991)
*joe hallenbeck/jimmy dix
to the people who have never seen this film, to put it in quick context: i tend to class it as the third film in the shane black trilogy, alongside the greats that are kiss kiss bang bang and the nice guys. it shares basically all the same tropes you most likely know and love from them, but is set in the 90s instead. and i’ve always wondered why the last boy scout is often overlooked when it’s arguably just as memorable.
specific likes:
the extended shane black buddy action/comedy universe | weird male bonding | noir stories & private detectives | dry humour | unusual partnerships working together for a common goal | found family tropes | darian swearing | adults not talking down to kids | extended bits performed through hand puppets | two guys against the entire government | beating up and getting beaten up by goons | darian inviting herself into investigations | satan clause | cheesy one liners | comedic violence | serious violence | hero worship | collecting football cards of some guy you know irl | the hallenbeck’s adopting jimmy dix into their lives post film
prompts:
for real, i would be happy with anything here as there isn’t a single fic for this film. this could be anything set during the film, a canon divergence, or something set after the film that explores their new private detective partnership, and a world where the hallenbeck family do indeed keep jimmy dix around.
f1 (movie 2025)
*sonny hayes/joshua pearce
*sonny hayes/sergio perez
formula 1 has been a staple in my house since i was a kid. i only became seriously interested myself when rush came out in 2016, and i've been watching it ever since. i'm no expert but i'd say i know a little more about the sport than the layman fast car movie goer. basically, what i mean to say is, i fully know this movie is complete and utter bullshit and that's okay. sure, if APX tried even half of these tactics for real, sonny hayes would have been publically executed by the FIA long before the season ended. that said, i don't particularly care about depicting realism and i live for the drama. i love underdog sports movies, as well as stories about second chances. i love mentor/mentee dynamics, especially when the lines begin to blur in a sexual relationship. there's also something to be said about people who don't really like each other being forced to work together in what is a very dangerous career choice. crashes and injuries are fine to explore, as this is fiction. i also think that writing something in this world allows for some unusual focuses, such as the in-universe televised aspect of it. press conferences, post race interviews and dumb contracted PR bonding sessions lend themselves to fun scenarios, maybe even some kind of outsider POV fic.
prompts:
hayes/pearce:
so i was a little surprised by how antagonistic they wrote their partnership to be. surprised, but ultimately delighted. the massive age gap not only highlights their differences as people, but as drivers as well. i really enjoy the friction they have from the very beginning, and even during the times hayes is genuinely trying to offer the kid legitimate advice. it's all about eventually earning the other guy's respect. and while i do think it would have made more sense for pearce to be the one to get their maiden win, with hayes doing all his underhanded shit as a means to get them most of the way there, i understand why the movie ends the way it does. BUT what if the roles were reversed and pearce did win?
kinda highly suspiciously gay to stay up all night obsessively watching your new teammate's old races. young and baby faced, pretty boy hayes must have left an impression on pearce, right? so what if he developed a crush and was extremely mad about it?
i do hate the trend where characters feel the need to split up or move on at the end of the movie. so, what if hayes didn't immediately abandon the team he helped keep alive for a few more years? what would the next season be like with this more compatible partnership?
hayes/perez:
i'll be honest, i just saw this was already in the movie's tagset and was compelled to request it. i'm a big fan of perez in irl formula 1 and i got a real kick out of seeing him cameo in the movie. going off my vague memories of watching it like a month ago, it's blink and you'll miss it territory, but i do seem to remember a battle on track between them, with perez defending hard against sonny. defending is one of perez's great talents and with the way the APX team race while pretty much disregarding all the rules, i just think perez being a constant roadblock in the road is incredibly funny. so, idk, i'm mostly recalling magnussen's famous suck my balls, honey quote, and while i can't picture perez ever being that rude, a more light hearted rivaly on and off track could be fun.
OR because perez is out of the sport too now thanks to red bull's shitty second driver car, maybe he runs into sonny at different motorsport race and they bond over getting out of that intense environment, only for them both to admit really missing it. then they bang or something, idk.
jurassic world: chaos theory (cartoon)
*darius bowman/kenji kon
*brooklyn/darius bowman/kenji kon
so i've really enjoyed getting to see these older versions of the characters as well as the more mature storylines that explore things like death and grief, emotional neglect and abandonment issues, ptsd, coming to terms with and adapting to a new disability, depression and suicide, and so much more.
so often when shows jump time like this it feels as though nothing has changed, like the status quo is the same, or the character were frozen in place between shows. but that's not the case here, there's so much character evolution right off the bat. and while i don't particularly like the jurassic world trilogy, i do enjoy the concept of wild dinosaurs being intergrated into the rest of the world, for better and for worse, so i'm glad that's carried over into the show at least. that said, i definitely enjoy the emotional character arcs more than the grander dinosaur conspiracy plot.
i really love where they've taken kenji's character so far. i liked him fine as the goofy rich kid who was somewhat naive about the horrible way his dad treated him. he was very obviously bravadoing his way through his trauma, trying to ignore it for what it really was. BUT i love him even more now that he's finally acknowledging the truth and choosing to cut ties with his father, instead attempting to build his own life and independence. he's still goofy, but now it's masking a deep depression and near obsession with keeping his friends safe, to point that he's willing to die for it, and that's definitely more my jam. the arrival of smoothie has definitely helped him to reach a more positive place, but i still like that brooklyn's betrayal has permenantly changed him.
darius is still the firm backbone of the group despite being the youngest. he's brave, kind, rightous to a fault, and even after experiencing what they all did on the island is still somehow a true patron to all dinosaurs. but i really like that he was able to have his own emotional response to brooklyn, with his own very specific feelings. he was forced to experience real doubt in his friends for the first time during this series and i find that reaction so incredibly interesting and ripe for exploring.
as for the rest of the nublar 6, yas is by far my favourite. i love her connection with kenji and the way she immediately clocks what he's going through. loyalty and the happiness of her friends is what's most important, traits which really align with kenji's ongoing arc.
darius/kenji:
okay, so i really don't see it as the untouchable brotherly relationship that most other people seem to. i know kenji found a place in darius' family following their time on the island, but i never took that as a literal adoption, more that it was just a safe place for kenji as friends. found family can still very much be a thing, but i think closing all doors on a possible deeper relationship forming from closeness is something that happens time and time ago in other examples.
i love that they were close during that time though, in a way the others weren't necessarily. it makes the fallout after brooklyn's apparent death all that more painful and rich in angst. there's a bond that's shared between two people who love the same person and were both betrayed by them too.
brooklyn/darius/kenji:
i was almost disappointed when they revealed brooklyn was alive because i was really enjoying the fallout, the way it created friction between darius and kenji. layers and layers of delicious blame and guilt and hurt. i eat all of that up happily. but, on the other hand, it turns out there's just as much delicious angst from the betrayal and mistrust surrounding the reveal that i did end up loving that too for different reasons.
anyway, my answer to love triangles is always to smoosh all three people together.
