Candy Hearts Exchange 2025
Jan. 1st, 2025 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blurhawaiidear writer,
thanks for checking out my letter. try not to worry too much, anything that you write for me, i promise you i'll love it. now, this letter is gonna be quite long—what with 7 requests—some are new and some are copy-pasted from previous exchanges. but feel free to ignore all the prompts if you've got an idea already in mind. as long as it avoids my DNWs, we should be good.
general likes:
dysfunctional relationships eg. codependency, messed up father/son dynamics, enemies to lovers (with or without the friend step in the middle), power imbalances, age gaps
unexpected team ups with unlikely characters OR bottle episodes as fic where characters are stuck together in a place/room, unable to leave
vulnerability in men, uncertain 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 purely plot driven fics, go way weirder if you like 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, difficult family relationships, characters that can’t seem to stay away from each other
supernatural horror, magical realism, cosmic horror, body horror, gothic horror, noir tropes, dark humour, monsters of any kind, ghosts, time loops
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 bigger problems
soulmate and daemon fics (this is mostly fandom specific, see prompts for more info)
any rating from gen to porn, as long as characters 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
permanent character death (temporary death, ghosts, resurrections are all fine though, e.g. khatri gets a full pass)
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 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 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 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 is yours to do with what you wish.
any fic where billy survives is always welcome. 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.
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 perfect 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 by 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 person could lend itself to some interesting scenarios. just imagine the interview scene with that fact in dignam’s back pocket. and something about daemons being a true reflection of souls really appeals to me when dropped into these circumstances. bonus points here if you twist or subvert these tropes into some unusual take on them.
slow horses (tv)
*river cartwright/jackson lamb
first of all, i'm all caught up on the show and am in possession of the books, ready to read through them. feel free to throw in some later book canon if you feel you need to, i’m not too bothered by spoilers, but i am mostly familiar with the show canon and the characterisation we’ve been shown so far.
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.
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 his joes, all while constantly berating them and making sure they know 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 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 young, 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 shipping content when river is still underage, but after that is fair game to me.
from (tv)
*jade herrera/tabitha matthews
*jade herrera/jim matthews
*jim matthews/tabitha matthews/jade herrera
*jade herrera/rudra khatri
*boyd stevens/rudra khatri
*boyd stevens/abby stevens/rudra khatri
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 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 with strangers, the vague threat of some kind of greater spider creature we still haven't seen, lost loved ones coming back as ghosts, hearing voices speaking through radios, the way coincidences are so frequently recurring 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.
more specifically, jade is my favourite and has been my favourite since the very beginning. this weed smoking, schrodinger’s bisexual, arrogant tech company guy who thinks his money can buy him everything, up to and including a way out of this (vr) nightmare. since his arrival in town, he’s maybe the character that has changed the most. a lot of his arrogance has been stripped away by the cruel reality he is stuck in. i do love to see a character suffering though, and i think the show succinctly conveys his new state of mind and his humbled acceptance by completely stripping away his pretty boy beginnings to give us mountain man jade instead. i like it, but i have a feeling we might not be seeing the kitty cat shirt in S4 :(
we have also now learned what his connection to the town is, and while it's not my most favourite reveal—jade and tabitha being reincarnations of previous residents—i know that there's a lot of fascinating character shit that can be mined from it in regards to where they take these relationships going forward.
prompts:
since i've asked for a wider range of ships for this show, i'm going to section the prompts into each pairing.
jade/jim & jade/tabitha & jade/jim/tabitha:
i love both of the relationships jade has with jim and tabitha separately. the logical experiments and science based world view that he shared with jim—set against the supernatural, scooby doo mystery sleuthing, vibes based world view that he shares with tabitha. narratively, they have always been entangled since their arrival, and that's something that has only become more true to me with each season.
tabitha seems to have an infinite well of patience when it comes to jade and i find that so compelling. because of this, she is one of the few characters that is actually willing to listen to him. in reverse, jade is completely non-judgemental about all the weird shit tabitha tells him about, which i think is what makes them a great team. maternal figures seem to cut straight through the heart of jade's bullshit, and this very much applies to his relationship with tabitha (not gonna say jade has mommy issues, but he is clearly drawn to them.) i'm not really interested in exploring their past lives in detail particularly, only in how they colour their new relationship in this time and this situation. they were unexpected sources of comfort for each other in S3 and i'd love to see more of that, especially given how the season ended.
jade is so oddly obsessed with jim in the early seasons, what with the constant seeking him out and calling him tea cup while lamenting about the blue of his eyes. there's a lot of aggresive touching too, under the guise of trying to figure shit out, and it very much gives off the vibes of when a kid annoys someone they have a crush on. and this is true for both sides, i'd say. and while jade's attention does seem to shift to tabitha at a point, this only adds more interesting friction between them for me when jim starts getting protective about his family (not gonna say jade also has daddy issues...but he absolutely does.) i realise i am probably in the minority of people who actually likes jim and his, i can fully admit this, endearing uselessness. but i do think we were robbed of getting to see him actually deal with the reincarnation reveal, as i am fascinated in how it would have changed his relationship with both tabitha & jade, for better and for worse. i'd love to read something where jim lives through this throat cutting or comes back somehow, be that as a ghost or as a severely injured man (the concept of a mute but still alive jim is so funny to me considering all the heavy shit he learns right before he dies.)
as for the ot3, i saw the potential from the very beginning. i've always firmly been in the camp that believes jade has the capacity to fix their fail marriage simply by being so annoying it brings jim and tabitha closer together again, by the power of them wanting to fuck him just as much as punch him. they also both yell at him a lot and that’s always good in my eyes because that's ususally what it takes to get through to him. BUT, with what we know now about jade and tabitha's past lives, my belief in this ot3 has actually strengthened. these character DO work best when they work together, this is explicitly show to us at the end of S3. i just dearly wish we got more than one episode showcasing it. so please, i'm begging you, give me more.
jade herrera/rudra khatri:
a real missed opportunity here, i think. jade called him beautiful while high, and khatri then carried him all the way up to colony house, saving his life. and since jade loses his oldest friend tobey on the same day that he arrives, maybe talking to a friendly priest in order to air all of his grievences will help fix him. there’s also the fact that jade is one of the few people who also regularly sees ghosts of dead residents in town, so what if he started seeing khatri too? they just both have a similiar kind of cynicism and a bitchy meanness to them, i think they would have gotten along given the chance.
boyd stevens/rudra khatri & boyd stevens/abby stevens/rudra khatri:
it's the whole leader and adviser thing they've got going on. it's a troubled man and his conscience hanging heavily on his shoulders. it's a poor widow who is convinced god wants him to suffer and a priest who swears god has a plan for him anyway. i think the boyd/khatri relationship might be the strongest one in the show, honestly, both while khatri is still alive and even now after. there's an immediate trust and respect we're shown from the start, in the way khatri asks boyd what they should be doing in the town. it's like day one that boyd is put in charge, and i do largely think this is because khatri chooses to follow boyd, leading his flock to follow him too.
khatri is such a atypical priest and i find that so fascinating. it's not often you get to see a priest advocating for putting a man to death. but he does, because he worries people will start to lose faith in boyd if he doesn't follow through with the rules he's set. that's wild, especially coming from a man of god, almost like he has more faith in boyd than he actually has in god. and that rhetoric seems to happen an awful lot in the show, i feel.
then khatri dies in boyd's arms and it's desperate and ugly and so very bloody. i love how shocking and sudden it is, clutching at necks and reciting prayers together, even though i do wish we got to keep khatri alive a little longer. i do love all his ghostly visits, designed to act as guidance for boyd, but i always wonder what would have happened if he did go with boyd into the forest like they had planned.
okay, so i threw in the boyd/abby/khatri pairing at the last minute, because i've noticed there's so many moments in the show where khatri is directly paralleled with or mentioned in the same breath as abby, boyd's also dead wife. boyd lost them both here and they both continue to haunt him in a manner that we can't be certain is even real. i don't know if one is a good presence while the other is evil, or if they're both lingering souls of the real people. either way, i find comparing their roles in boyd's life to be so compelling.
as for more general prompts, i think the necessity of the talismans could lead to a great bottle episode type of fic, as in contriving an in-universe reason to stick these combinations of characters together in a place overnight. i don't think the show capitalises of that enough. it doesn't have to be house either, as we are shown the talismans work in cars as well as tents, so there's many other possible places for people to be stuck together in close quarters.
S3 also did introduce time travel to the show, wildly. or at least the ability to go back into previous lived moments. feel free to explore that to your hearts content. (again, it would be very funny to me if julie's meddling while storywalking is what leads to jim/tabitha/jade happening. she would hate that, but i would love it.)
24 (tv)
*tony almeida/jack bauer
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 since been reliving my obsession again.
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 the amazing journey his character goes on. just know that i appreciate every era he goes through.
tony manages to stay very dry and sardonic throughout, 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 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 last two seasons. xander berkeley the GOAT.)
i 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 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 bring up 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 can still find the time to sit in his car at the end of a long day and cry. he really can do it all and there’s not much more i feel i need to say.
there’s an underlining of 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.
prompts:
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 obviously from my request i'm very interested in anything exploring tony/jack/michelle and tony/jack/nina.
straight out of prison, depressed and alcoholic tony is a personal favourite of mine. the way jack relays all the sad facts to audrey so casually has always blown my mind. it means jack was there at the sidelines to see it, and he even mentions michelle’s side of things too, showing that he’s familiar with her post-separation too. i once read a post where someone wrote: do you think jack was the best man at tony’s wedding? that question has haunted me ever since, and being confronted with tony at rock bottom always brings it to the front of my mind.
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 it all behind michelle’s back out of necessity.
i’m 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 any era could honestly be interesting. whether that’s early season 1 during the break in jack’s marriage, or season three when jack is head of OPS and tony is his equal. hell, bring back george mason for a day and let him and tony bitch about jack and their coworkers while standing at the water cooler together. i’m game for anything and anyone, as long as tony and jack are present.
season 7 villain tony. i love the angst jack experiences when learning that tony is 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.
inception (2010)
*dom cobb/saito
*dom cobb/mal cobb/saito
*mal cobb/saito
love the orpheus and eurydice vibes of cobb returning to limbo to rescue saito and finally letting go of mal’s memory | the theme of waiting a lifetime for someone | the repeated language that is shared between both 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 | the many parallels between mal & saito, the way they team up in the opening of the film, a product of cobb’s subconscious ( projection!mal ) being immediately trusted in saito’s mind, what does that mean? | the sharing of mal’s spinning top totem between all three of them | saito always being shown and focused on when cobb is told to look for help dealing with mal's projection | saito’s loyalty in honouring their agreement even after being lost in limbo for so long | the infinite possibilities of dream architecture | the uncertainty of what’s real and what isn’t.
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.
so there's an unpublished prequel comic that has saito frequenting dream arcades and participating in motorbike races for money - and i guess for the thrill of it too, idk. this is so wild to me but, at the same time, i can admit there's a lot potential in the idea of cobb taking advantage of this knowledge when he's trying to extract from saito at the beginning of the film. maybe he gets a bit too close at one of these dream arcades while trying to get an accurate profile on saito. go even weird with it if you want, have mal show up there too. i found a script for the comic here, if you're interested.
locke (2013)
*donal/ivan locke
recently rewatched this and i honestly think it's an underappreciated masterpiece. a hour and a half long car ride that’s totally compelling, and it’s all down to tom hardy and his welsh accent that’s not even welsh. of all the relationships broken down, strengthened, or tentatively started, it’s the one between ivan and donal that interests me the most. you’re given just enough background to know there is a history between these two. whether donal is his right hand man on the project or is just an assistant that effectively gets promoted because he’s the only one still there willing to take ivan’s call. either way, there’s trust there, on top of the shared knowledge of donal’s capacity to get drunk on the job – this has clearly been a problem before – but ivan still trusts him enough to get his baby of a building built when he can’t be there personally, and that fascinates me.
i love the us vs them dynamic that develops over the course of the film. ivan calls donal a good man by the end of it and i think he really means it. the only happiness we see from ivan happens during his calls to donal. sure, there's the call to his children, but there's always this deep layer of guilt he carries while speaking to them, like he knows having another child with someone who is not their mother is a betrayal against them too. despite this, i love ivan always striving to do what is right and his insistance that details matter. love me a good poetic monologuing, too. as well as having conversations with dead people/people who aren’t actually there.
i don’t know anything about concrete farming though so feel free to fudge that as much as you need to.
prompts:
having an extramarital baby with a woman who doesn’t like you is not a happy ending, when that situation doesn’t work out and ivan finds he has no home to return to, donal strikes me as something who needs looking after. donal is one bad day away from a driving ban and i can totally see him as a new project ivan can pour his focus into.
i have this image of ivan sleeping on donal’s couch because his wife won’t take him back, and so he’s just backseat driving the construction of his building through donal’s vague connection to it, you’ve got a man who has lost everything and a pseudo-alcoholic just wallowing together, maybe clinging to the idea that with the success of the building maybe they can fix themselves.
another car journey, but donal is in the car with ivan this time.
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
*augustin jordan/paddy mayne
i'm a little surprised no one else nominated this show considering we just got another season with the new year. it feels kind of unlikely this request has much of a chance knowing this, especially considering i'm mostly interested in a pairing where one of the characters didn't even appear this time around. even paddy's lost love and narrative ghost made an appearance, but sadly not his sand wrestling buddy augustin jordan.
regardless, i did enjoy the second season, for the most part. sure, character wise, not much changed with paddy. even with the new weight of leadership, he was very much the same man by the end. thankfully, paddy being a sad, suicidal and violent poet is exactly what i love him for, so i can't really complain too much.
so i adore any and all references to paddy being a wild dog, the idea that eoin was the only one who could leash him and without him paddy bites at anything that come near him. eoin dying left him unleashed in every sense of the word, and i find it so amusing that his superiors bring augustin in for the express purpose of trying to find some kind of middle ground with paddy, as a similarly cultured guy with a love for literature. there's so much that can be mined from their mutual love for books and poetry, and the way that this love is used both affectionately and antagonistically between them.
love that the piano becomes like it’s own character when paddy mayne is involved, for it's past history with eoin and it's opportunity for future growth with augustin. and obviously i get a lot of enjoyment out of watching their deadly yet homoerotic wrestling in the sand. considering augustin is only in a couple of episodes, he manages to have such a fascinating arc with paddy. it's clear that they don’t want to like each other but can’t help respecting each other by the end. i only wish we could have seen more of it.
i can't help but love the idea that everyone is somewhat aware of how deep the paddy/eoin relationship went despite rarely talking about it, and i'm similarly interested in augustin having to come to terms with the fact that he'll never be able to take eoin's place, even while possibly falling into the new role of paddy's leash holder.
prompts:
anything where augustin learns about eoin and how, in turn, that leads to him better understanding paddy. through outsider pov dropping hints about what their relationship was like, to the piano incident being explained. i love the idea of augustin piecing everything together and seeing paddy differently.
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 gestures instead, and the juxtaposition that has for two people supposedly so 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 on the journey.
as for something set during S2, maybe they still keep in touch via letters. what better way to keep sparring with each other that by sparring with written word. OR, considering the war takes paddy back to europe and more specifically to france, maybe there's a chance they could meet again, now that paddy is this new shaved beast while possible being even more fucked in head.
thanks for checking out my letter. try not to worry too much, anything that you write for me, i promise you i'll love it. now, this letter is gonna be quite long—what with 7 requests—some are new and some are copy-pasted from previous exchanges. but feel free to ignore all the prompts if you've got an idea already in mind. as long as it avoids my DNWs, we should be good.
general likes:
dysfunctional relationships eg. codependency, messed up father/son dynamics, enemies to lovers (with or without the friend step in the middle), power imbalances, age gaps
unexpected team ups with unlikely characters OR bottle episodes as fic where characters are stuck together in a place/room, unable to leave
vulnerability in men, uncertain 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 purely plot driven fics, go way weirder if you like 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, difficult family relationships, characters that can’t seem to stay away from each other
supernatural horror, magical realism, cosmic horror, body horror, gothic horror, noir tropes, dark humour, monsters of any kind, ghosts, time loops
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 bigger problems
soulmate and daemon fics (this is mostly fandom specific, see prompts for more info)
any rating from gen to porn, as long as characters 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
permanent character death (temporary death, ghosts, resurrections are all fine though, e.g. khatri gets a full pass)
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 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 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 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 is yours to do with what you wish.
any fic where billy survives is always welcome. 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.
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 perfect 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 by 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 person could lend itself to some interesting scenarios. just imagine the interview scene with that fact in dignam’s back pocket. and something about daemons being a true reflection of souls really appeals to me when dropped into these circumstances. bonus points here if you twist or subvert these tropes into some unusual take on them.
slow horses (tv)
*river cartwright/jackson lamb
first of all, i'm all caught up on the show and am in possession of the books, ready to read through them. feel free to throw in some later book canon if you feel you need to, i’m not too bothered by spoilers, but i am mostly familiar with the show canon and the characterisation we’ve been shown so far.
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.
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 his joes, all while constantly berating them and making sure they know 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 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 young, 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 shipping content when river is still underage, but after that is fair game to me.
from (tv)
*jade herrera/tabitha matthews
*jade herrera/jim matthews
*jim matthews/tabitha matthews/jade herrera
*jade herrera/rudra khatri
*boyd stevens/rudra khatri
*boyd stevens/abby stevens/rudra khatri
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 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 with strangers, the vague threat of some kind of greater spider creature we still haven't seen, lost loved ones coming back as ghosts, hearing voices speaking through radios, the way coincidences are so frequently recurring 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.
more specifically, jade is my favourite and has been my favourite since the very beginning. this weed smoking, schrodinger’s bisexual, arrogant tech company guy who thinks his money can buy him everything, up to and including a way out of this (vr) nightmare. since his arrival in town, he’s maybe the character that has changed the most. a lot of his arrogance has been stripped away by the cruel reality he is stuck in. i do love to see a character suffering though, and i think the show succinctly conveys his new state of mind and his humbled acceptance by completely stripping away his pretty boy beginnings to give us mountain man jade instead. i like it, but i have a feeling we might not be seeing the kitty cat shirt in S4 :(
we have also now learned what his connection to the town is, and while it's not my most favourite reveal—jade and tabitha being reincarnations of previous residents—i know that there's a lot of fascinating character shit that can be mined from it in regards to where they take these relationships going forward.
prompts:
since i've asked for a wider range of ships for this show, i'm going to section the prompts into each pairing.
jade/jim & jade/tabitha & jade/jim/tabitha:
i love both of the relationships jade has with jim and tabitha separately. the logical experiments and science based world view that he shared with jim—set against the supernatural, scooby doo mystery sleuthing, vibes based world view that he shares with tabitha. narratively, they have always been entangled since their arrival, and that's something that has only become more true to me with each season.
tabitha seems to have an infinite well of patience when it comes to jade and i find that so compelling. because of this, she is one of the few characters that is actually willing to listen to him. in reverse, jade is completely non-judgemental about all the weird shit tabitha tells him about, which i think is what makes them a great team. maternal figures seem to cut straight through the heart of jade's bullshit, and this very much applies to his relationship with tabitha (not gonna say jade has mommy issues, but he is clearly drawn to them.) i'm not really interested in exploring their past lives in detail particularly, only in how they colour their new relationship in this time and this situation. they were unexpected sources of comfort for each other in S3 and i'd love to see more of that, especially given how the season ended.
jade is so oddly obsessed with jim in the early seasons, what with the constant seeking him out and calling him tea cup while lamenting about the blue of his eyes. there's a lot of aggresive touching too, under the guise of trying to figure shit out, and it very much gives off the vibes of when a kid annoys someone they have a crush on. and this is true for both sides, i'd say. and while jade's attention does seem to shift to tabitha at a point, this only adds more interesting friction between them for me when jim starts getting protective about his family (not gonna say jade also has daddy issues...but he absolutely does.) i realise i am probably in the minority of people who actually likes jim and his, i can fully admit this, endearing uselessness. but i do think we were robbed of getting to see him actually deal with the reincarnation reveal, as i am fascinated in how it would have changed his relationship with both tabitha & jade, for better and for worse. i'd love to read something where jim lives through this throat cutting or comes back somehow, be that as a ghost or as a severely injured man (the concept of a mute but still alive jim is so funny to me considering all the heavy shit he learns right before he dies.)
as for the ot3, i saw the potential from the very beginning. i've always firmly been in the camp that believes jade has the capacity to fix their fail marriage simply by being so annoying it brings jim and tabitha closer together again, by the power of them wanting to fuck him just as much as punch him. they also both yell at him a lot and that’s always good in my eyes because that's ususally what it takes to get through to him. BUT, with what we know now about jade and tabitha's past lives, my belief in this ot3 has actually strengthened. these character DO work best when they work together, this is explicitly show to us at the end of S3. i just dearly wish we got more than one episode showcasing it. so please, i'm begging you, give me more.
jade herrera/rudra khatri:
a real missed opportunity here, i think. jade called him beautiful while high, and khatri then carried him all the way up to colony house, saving his life. and since jade loses his oldest friend tobey on the same day that he arrives, maybe talking to a friendly priest in order to air all of his grievences will help fix him. there’s also the fact that jade is one of the few people who also regularly sees ghosts of dead residents in town, so what if he started seeing khatri too? they just both have a similiar kind of cynicism and a bitchy meanness to them, i think they would have gotten along given the chance.
boyd stevens/rudra khatri & boyd stevens/abby stevens/rudra khatri:
it's the whole leader and adviser thing they've got going on. it's a troubled man and his conscience hanging heavily on his shoulders. it's a poor widow who is convinced god wants him to suffer and a priest who swears god has a plan for him anyway. i think the boyd/khatri relationship might be the strongest one in the show, honestly, both while khatri is still alive and even now after. there's an immediate trust and respect we're shown from the start, in the way khatri asks boyd what they should be doing in the town. it's like day one that boyd is put in charge, and i do largely think this is because khatri chooses to follow boyd, leading his flock to follow him too.
khatri is such a atypical priest and i find that so fascinating. it's not often you get to see a priest advocating for putting a man to death. but he does, because he worries people will start to lose faith in boyd if he doesn't follow through with the rules he's set. that's wild, especially coming from a man of god, almost like he has more faith in boyd than he actually has in god. and that rhetoric seems to happen an awful lot in the show, i feel.
then khatri dies in boyd's arms and it's desperate and ugly and so very bloody. i love how shocking and sudden it is, clutching at necks and reciting prayers together, even though i do wish we got to keep khatri alive a little longer. i do love all his ghostly visits, designed to act as guidance for boyd, but i always wonder what would have happened if he did go with boyd into the forest like they had planned.
okay, so i threw in the boyd/abby/khatri pairing at the last minute, because i've noticed there's so many moments in the show where khatri is directly paralleled with or mentioned in the same breath as abby, boyd's also dead wife. boyd lost them both here and they both continue to haunt him in a manner that we can't be certain is even real. i don't know if one is a good presence while the other is evil, or if they're both lingering souls of the real people. either way, i find comparing their roles in boyd's life to be so compelling.
as for more general prompts, i think the necessity of the talismans could lead to a great bottle episode type of fic, as in contriving an in-universe reason to stick these combinations of characters together in a place overnight. i don't think the show capitalises of that enough. it doesn't have to be house either, as we are shown the talismans work in cars as well as tents, so there's many other possible places for people to be stuck together in close quarters.
S3 also did introduce time travel to the show, wildly. or at least the ability to go back into previous lived moments. feel free to explore that to your hearts content. (again, it would be very funny to me if julie's meddling while storywalking is what leads to jim/tabitha/jade happening. she would hate that, but i would love it.)
24 (tv)
*tony almeida/jack bauer
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 since been reliving my obsession again.
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 the amazing journey his character goes on. just know that i appreciate every era he goes through.
tony manages to stay very dry and sardonic throughout, 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 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 last two seasons. xander berkeley the GOAT.)
i 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 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 bring up 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 can still find the time to sit in his car at the end of a long day and cry. he really can do it all and there’s not much more i feel i need to say.
there’s an underlining of 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.
prompts:
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 obviously from my request i'm very interested in anything exploring tony/jack/michelle and tony/jack/nina.
straight out of prison, depressed and alcoholic tony is a personal favourite of mine. the way jack relays all the sad facts to audrey so casually has always blown my mind. it means jack was there at the sidelines to see it, and he even mentions michelle’s side of things too, showing that he’s familiar with her post-separation too. i once read a post where someone wrote: do you think jack was the best man at tony’s wedding? that question has haunted me ever since, and being confronted with tony at rock bottom always brings it to the front of my mind.
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 it all behind michelle’s back out of necessity.
i’m 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 any era could honestly be interesting. whether that’s early season 1 during the break in jack’s marriage, or season three when jack is head of OPS and tony is his equal. hell, bring back george mason for a day and let him and tony bitch about jack and their coworkers while standing at the water cooler together. i’m game for anything and anyone, as long as tony and jack are present.
season 7 villain tony. i love the angst jack experiences when learning that tony is 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.
inception (2010)
*dom cobb/saito
*dom cobb/mal cobb/saito
*mal cobb/saito
love the orpheus and eurydice vibes of cobb returning to limbo to rescue saito and finally letting go of mal’s memory | the theme of waiting a lifetime for someone | the repeated language that is shared between both 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 | the many parallels between mal & saito, the way they team up in the opening of the film, a product of cobb’s subconscious ( projection!mal ) being immediately trusted in saito’s mind, what does that mean? | the sharing of mal’s spinning top totem between all three of them | saito always being shown and focused on when cobb is told to look for help dealing with mal's projection | saito’s loyalty in honouring their agreement even after being lost in limbo for so long | the infinite possibilities of dream architecture | the uncertainty of what’s real and what isn’t.
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.
so there's an unpublished prequel comic that has saito frequenting dream arcades and participating in motorbike races for money - and i guess for the thrill of it too, idk. this is so wild to me but, at the same time, i can admit there's a lot potential in the idea of cobb taking advantage of this knowledge when he's trying to extract from saito at the beginning of the film. maybe he gets a bit too close at one of these dream arcades while trying to get an accurate profile on saito. go even weird with it if you want, have mal show up there too. i found a script for the comic here, if you're interested.
locke (2013)
*donal/ivan locke
recently rewatched this and i honestly think it's an underappreciated masterpiece. a hour and a half long car ride that’s totally compelling, and it’s all down to tom hardy and his welsh accent that’s not even welsh. of all the relationships broken down, strengthened, or tentatively started, it’s the one between ivan and donal that interests me the most. you’re given just enough background to know there is a history between these two. whether donal is his right hand man on the project or is just an assistant that effectively gets promoted because he’s the only one still there willing to take ivan’s call. either way, there’s trust there, on top of the shared knowledge of donal’s capacity to get drunk on the job – this has clearly been a problem before – but ivan still trusts him enough to get his baby of a building built when he can’t be there personally, and that fascinates me.
i love the us vs them dynamic that develops over the course of the film. ivan calls donal a good man by the end of it and i think he really means it. the only happiness we see from ivan happens during his calls to donal. sure, there's the call to his children, but there's always this deep layer of guilt he carries while speaking to them, like he knows having another child with someone who is not their mother is a betrayal against them too. despite this, i love ivan always striving to do what is right and his insistance that details matter. love me a good poetic monologuing, too. as well as having conversations with dead people/people who aren’t actually there.
i don’t know anything about concrete farming though so feel free to fudge that as much as you need to.
prompts:
having an extramarital baby with a woman who doesn’t like you is not a happy ending, when that situation doesn’t work out and ivan finds he has no home to return to, donal strikes me as something who needs looking after. donal is one bad day away from a driving ban and i can totally see him as a new project ivan can pour his focus into.
i have this image of ivan sleeping on donal’s couch because his wife won’t take him back, and so he’s just backseat driving the construction of his building through donal’s vague connection to it, you’ve got a man who has lost everything and a pseudo-alcoholic just wallowing together, maybe clinging to the idea that with the success of the building maybe they can fix themselves.
another car journey, but donal is in the car with ivan this time.
sas: rogue heroes (tv)
*augustin jordan/paddy mayne
i'm a little surprised no one else nominated this show considering we just got another season with the new year. it feels kind of unlikely this request has much of a chance knowing this, especially considering i'm mostly interested in a pairing where one of the characters didn't even appear this time around. even paddy's lost love and narrative ghost made an appearance, but sadly not his sand wrestling buddy augustin jordan.
regardless, i did enjoy the second season, for the most part. sure, character wise, not much changed with paddy. even with the new weight of leadership, he was very much the same man by the end. thankfully, paddy being a sad, suicidal and violent poet is exactly what i love him for, so i can't really complain too much.
so i adore any and all references to paddy being a wild dog, the idea that eoin was the only one who could leash him and without him paddy bites at anything that come near him. eoin dying left him unleashed in every sense of the word, and i find it so amusing that his superiors bring augustin in for the express purpose of trying to find some kind of middle ground with paddy, as a similarly cultured guy with a love for literature. there's so much that can be mined from their mutual love for books and poetry, and the way that this love is used both affectionately and antagonistically between them.
love that the piano becomes like it’s own character when paddy mayne is involved, for it's past history with eoin and it's opportunity for future growth with augustin. and obviously i get a lot of enjoyment out of watching their deadly yet homoerotic wrestling in the sand. considering augustin is only in a couple of episodes, he manages to have such a fascinating arc with paddy. it's clear that they don’t want to like each other but can’t help respecting each other by the end. i only wish we could have seen more of it.
i can't help but love the idea that everyone is somewhat aware of how deep the paddy/eoin relationship went despite rarely talking about it, and i'm similarly interested in augustin having to come to terms with the fact that he'll never be able to take eoin's place, even while possibly falling into the new role of paddy's leash holder.
prompts:
anything where augustin learns about eoin and how, in turn, that leads to him better understanding paddy. through outsider pov dropping hints about what their relationship was like, to the piano incident being explained. i love the idea of augustin piecing everything together and seeing paddy differently.
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 gestures instead, and the juxtaposition that has for two people supposedly so 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 on the journey.
as for something set during S2, maybe they still keep in touch via letters. what better way to keep sparring with each other that by sparring with written word. OR, considering the war takes paddy back to europe and more specifically to france, maybe there's a chance they could meet again, now that paddy is this new shaved beast while possible being even more fucked in head.
