Dear Rare Male Slash Exchange Writer (2017)

[scioscribe]

Thank you you so much for writing for me!  I’m so thrilled to even have an excuse to talk about some of my favorite rarepairs, so you’ve already done me a favor.  I hope this letter is helpful, but ODAO, so of course feel free to go your own way and toss out anything here that doesn’t work for you, especially if you’re excited about your own idea!  I hope you have an amazing exchange.

If you want to get a better sense of me, I'm scioscribe on Tumblr and on AO3.

 

Likes

 

enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, emotional vulnerability, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, sympathetic bad guys, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, partnerships, power dynamics, ambiguously intense relationships, found family, first-time stories, betrayal with reconciliation, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, age gaps, fake/pretend relationship, secret relationship, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, undercover work, loyalty, complicated relationships, codependency, morally gray characters, moral complexity, long relationships that go through a lot of changes

 

Sex Likes/Kinks

 

informal BDSM (especially D/s and bondage), spanking, clothed sex, rough sex, dubcon/consent play, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, talking during sex, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or depressing), enthusiastic sex, coming untouched, coming in pants, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, marking/bruising/biting

 

DNW

 

underage, fisting, mpreg, violent noncon, college/high school AUs, A/B/O, knotting

 

The Americans

Arkady Zotov/Oleg Burov

 

Arkady’s slow increase in respect and affection for Oleg as he realizes Oleg isn’t just the spoiled son of some bureaucrat is one of my favorite emotional arcs on the show; the eventual warm, wry affection between the two of them is such a delight.  I love Oleg enthusiastically explaining science to Arkady and Arkady complimenting his work.  All their private, trusting conversations--whether they’re about work or Oleg’s father--are terrific.  And I have a soft spot for dropped patronymics in moments of unusual intimacy.  (I really like Arkady’s role as Rezident, so I’d prefer not to jump off into post-S4 yet, or at least not canonical post-S4.)

 

Prompts

•  Oleg lends the Rezidentura some much-needed cheer, at least early on--playing computer games with Nina, for example--so it would be great to see him trying to cheer Arkady up or entertain him, especially if he doesn’t say that’s what he’s doing.  Though Arkady, being Arkady, might realize it anyway.
• If you’re into something more dramatic, I’d love to see Oleg’s cooperation with Stan blow up in his face in a way that would affect his relationship with Arkady.  What would Arkady’s reaction be if he found out Oleg had passed on information, even with the best of intentions and for very understandable reasons?  After seeing what happened to Nina, would Arkady be able to turn him in, or would it be a very bitter, dark secret between them?  Is it a betrayal of the relationship, or a betrayal that acts a catalyst to form it?  All the loyalty kink, basically.
• Really, anything that deals with the two of them starting a relationship in the aftermath of Nina’s arrest.  Emotional hurt/comfort turns romantic as Arkady tries to make sure Oleg doesn’t self-destruct?  Oleg feeling guilty about starting to think about Arkady that way so soon after Nina?  Complicated, emotionally messy, sort of self-hating sex?  Gentle, subtle, informal Dom Arkady?  Really anything with the awkward mash-up of feeling terrible about one person while being really attracted to another.
• If you want to go more explicit, some things I find particularly interesting for the two of them are service kink, praise kink, gentle BDSM, desk sex, teasing, marking/biting/bruising/general possessiveness, good-humored cheer-up sex, and focus on mussed hair and rumpled clothes in the aftermath.

Community
Abed Nadir/Jeff Winger

 

I ship these two so much that, as good as the third season is, I nonetheless bear it a minor grudge for not featuring a Jeff/Abed episode like “Contemporary American Poultry” or “Critical Film Studies.”  I love that Jeff often discloses his just-under-the-surface messy neuroticism to Abed and that Abed responds to it (including recommending that Jeff stop focusing so much on Chris Pratt); that they can both be incredible control freaks; that Abed seems to bring out Jeff’s protective side, like when he steps in as his “bodyguard” in the face of Mike-the-Christmas-bully; and that they have a quiet, genuine connection and great repartee.

 

Prompts

•  What if when the two of them got drunk together in season one to facilitate Jeff drunk-dialing Britta, they’d wound up hooking up?  The complications could be agonizingly awkward in the most delightful way.  How would it immediately play into the Jeff/Britta/Slater triangle?  Do the two of them end up having secret sex for a while?
• Similarly, what if something had happened while Jeff was temporarily living in Abed’s dorm room?  There are just so many great, shippy character beats in that episode, like Jeff’s geekiness in trying to drum up some money by selling his old comic books or Abed comparing their situation to Overboard.
• Really, any kind of first time fic, especially if it somehow incorporates Abed’s movie/TV references.  Do they end up stuck in a meta rom-com situation?  Does Abed use his Don Draper impression at any point?
  
• Established relationships are awesome too, and they provide great jumping-off points for some more of my favorite tropes.  Incredibly awkward parental meetings possibly made worse by Abed’s out-of-the-picture mom and Jeff’s out-of-the-picture dad?  Physical or emotional h/c?--they both have some pretty prominent insecurities, like Jeff’s body image issues or Abed worrying about whether or not he can connect with people without pop culture as a backdrop, so in addition to the absent parents, they have a lot of room for tangled emotional set-ups.  And I always love regular hurt/comfort, in every configuration from ridiculously over-the-top and unlikely scenarios to one getting sick and the other tentatively doing coupley things like buying the other orange juice and making him soup.
• If you want to go explicit, I have a couple kinks I particularly like with them: body worship, film/TV-informed roleplay, praise kink, and semi-public sex.

 

Double Indemnity

Barton Keyes/Walter Neff

 

One of my favorite noirs and a pairing I’ve shipped since the first time I saw it, way back in high school film lit.  In a genre where you can’t trust anyone, there’s something so compelling and painful about Keyes’s absolute trust in Walter and how Walter feels guilty for taking advantage of that but does it anyway.  And the sense of intimacy between them--all those lit cigarettes!--and the complexities of authority and loyalty there are very much my jam.  I’m really interested in dark/tragic/bittersweet takes on this ship.

 

Prompts

•  A sort of re-written canon from Keyes’s point-of-view, with Walter as his homme fatal.  I love noir homages, and seeing some of those tropes pulled out of shape to tell the story of the movie--or the longer story of their relationship--from a different angle would be awesome.
• Loyalty kink and/or service kink!  I’m all in for the sheer pain of Keyes defending Walter or trusting him with information he shouldn’t, and I’m equally all in for Walter having a service kink he may or may not be aware of (and may be ashamed of, if he is aware of it), and maybe doubling down on that because he feels so guilty over Keyes’s misplaced trust.
• Keyes figuring out, or at least suspecting, Walter’s role in the murder earlier than he canonically does, and either using the relationship between them to pressure Walter into confessing or to punish him in some way (for the betrayal, for the crime itself), or else pulling away and leaving a panicky Walter chasing after him and trying to mend things, both because he misses Keyes and because he has no insider info on the investigation without him.
• If you want to go explicit, this ship is a kink goldmine: BDSM (possibly negotiated very well at first and then less and less so if the fic starts to get darker--I kind of picture Keyes as kinking a little on the “contractual” details, but that sliding away as things get more intimate and/or their relationship gets more tense), physical punishment, clothed sex, service kink, fraught sex where Keyes is happy and unaware of any problem and Walter is feeling incredibly guilty, orders/instructions (maybe with the pressure to talk, with the incentive of an orgasm), praise kink, begging, maybe a little bit of humiliation.

 

 

Justified

Boyd Crowder/Colton Rhodes

 

I have a permanent place in my heart for criminal fuck-ups with serious loyalty kink, so obviously I have a thing for the Boyd/Colt relationship.  They have an awesome sense of complicated history, especially with Colt having been an MP.  They’re set up to be tragically, morally awful in conjunction with each other, with Boyd having more caution and Colt having more conscience, and I love how they make a time bomb ticking down to a very sad kind of doom.

 

Prompts

 

• Anything set in their military days.  Boyd endlessly and entertainingly bullshitting Colt in his best Boyd Crowder fashion while he’s technically under arrest, until Colt can’t help but like him.  Handcuff sex.  An off-kilter friends with benefits arrangement with occasional pining for more, where Colt busts guys for pot possession and then he and Boyd go off and smoke it all together and make stoned confessions to each other.  Combat injuries, the threat of them, or combat danger, with hurt/comfort and loyalty kink.
• Maybe a tense, emotional interlude in the days when Colt is pretending to have killed Ellen May?  I can just picture a jittery, frantic Colt trying to rekindle something because he’s stressed and vulnerable and/or because he wants to secure his position with Boyd.  Or I could see Boyd trying to calm him down and then starting to suspect something.
• Or a likewise tense, emotional interlude in the days when Boyd knows the whole story but has decided he can still trust Colt: Loyalty kink with gunplay, given Boyd’s insistence on staging the faux-murder with Colt pointing a gun at the back of his head?  Gratitude sex?  Some surprisingly sweet bit of intimacy where Boyd is legitimately concerned about whether or not Colt can pull his life out of this skid?  I am totally open to having my heart a little broken by Boyd actually thinking about what’s best for Colt and trying to convince him to get out of the game.
• For more explicit takes for these two, I especially like D/s, gunplay, knifeplay, handcuffs, rough sex, and dirty talk Boyd Crowder-style.

 

Raylan Givens/David Vasquez

 

Sexy Human Disaster Raylan Givens + Sexy Casual Intellectual Badass David Vasquez is a natural combination.  I love their rapport and the way Vasquez understands Raylan and is amused by him and respectful of his methods--right up until the point where they start causing trouble, and then he can investigate Raylan scrupulously while still being supportive of his good ideas.  They both present an easygoing front but have considerable bite underneath it.  Raylan will shoot people, and David will demolish them with logic.  That sounds like a good match.

 

Prompts

 

• Given Raylan continuously sleeping with the witnesses he needs to back up his stories, I’m so here for an awkward workplace comedy of manners scenario where he winds up also sleeping with the person in charge of investigating those stories.  The two of them having to disclose their relationship to incredulous coworkers/superiors who are all wondering why the hell this keeps happening would be amazing.  The level of sheepishness would be off the charts.
• Anything where the two of them act as a well-oiled team to solve a problem or flummox or trick someone.  My favorite moments with the two of them on the show are where David smoothly facilitates something for Raylan, like bluffing about a lawsuit so he can delay the SWAT team to give Raylan more time to defuse the hostage situation.  I’d love to see the two of them backing each other up like that, even in casual or silly situations.  (Though I have a deep love of hurt/comfort and people worrying about each other, so also feel free to throw the two of them into a middle of their own hostage negotiation, or something similar.)
• Vasquez seems much more comfortable in his own skin than Raylan is in his, and it’s not hard for me to imagine that extends to being out of the closet.  What if David is comfortable being (at least relatively) openly gay or bi, but publically dating a man is still something fairly new to Raylan?  Awkward dates where Raylan doesn’t know what to do or has trouble relaxing would be so much fun.  Anything on the spectrum of “I don’t know whether or not I should buy him flowers and I don’t know who pays for dinner” to “it bothers me that you keep downplaying our relationship” would be terrific.
• I seem to be stuck on a romantic comedy vibe for all of these, so feel free to steal any and all stock romance tropes and put these two wry, dangerous guys in Harlequin-style situations.
• If you’re interested in going explicit, some things I particularly like for these two are rough sex, clothed sex, clothing getting mussed, teasing, comedically bad or awkward sex, and overstimulation/edging.

 

 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Harry Lockhart/Perry van Shrike

 

I love this movie and this pairing so much.  The banter between these two is so sharp--“Badly is an adverb.  Who taught you grammar?”--and the chemistry between them is so excellent, with Harry getting under Perry’s skin and Perry being irritated by it and yet liking it, and Harry being not-so-secretly sort of in awe over how cool Perry is.  That Harry ends up working for Perry at the end of the movie is just the cherry on top of an already very shippy cake.  They’re just so charming together.

 

Prompts

 

• Is Harry Perry’s rookie partner or his assistant/secretary?  I can see Harry angling repeatedly for partnership while Perry incredulously keeps saying no (and probably eventually saying yes).  This could also be a fun opportunity for some more hardboiled homage, given the flirtiness some of the old-school detectives often shared with their secretaries, and Harry eventually getting flummoxed as to whether or not sex is hotter when it’s a boss/employee thing would be golden.
• Harry trying to be romantic and Perry insisting that guys like him don’t do that, only for him to end up making a genuine, more personalized romantic gesture as he works through what Harry actually means to him.
• Any amount of sexual crisis on either of their parts, whether it’s Perry being irritated at himself for lusting after a “straight” guy to Harry’s belated bisexual awakening, with one or both of them working through confusion and some variety of pining.
• Any kind of role reversal, with Harry ecstatic to be the more competent one for a change, like him showing Perry around a city that he knows better or having to teach Perry magic tricks for an undercover operation or being the comforter in a hurt/comfort scenario (Perry’s canonical gunshot wound?  Illness?  Casualty of the job injury).
• If you want to go explicit, some things I particularly like for them are first-time-with-a-man, informal and casual D/s and bondage, sex toys, collaring, oral, desk sex, roleplay, sexy undercover work with or without costumes, and dirty talk/talking during sex.

 

 Marvel Cinematic Universe

Nick Fury/Tony Stark

 

I saw one mildly shippy photo-set for these two and immediately the pairing clicked in my head and I became incredibly invested in it.  I love their mutual skepticism about each other and how they slowly develop genuine loyalty and attachment.  I love the contrast between the devil-may-care, go-it-alone attitude Tony has for so long and Fury’s sense of leadership and institution.  The ship provides such interesting ways for them to bounce off each other for the benefit of great character development.

 

Prompts

• I love canon-divergence AUs.  It would be great to see what might have happened if Fury had been able to recruit a pre-Iron Man Tony to work at SHIELD, either full-time or just off the occasional contract.  (I’m also totally down for a non-Hydra-connected SHIELD: I have more of a soft spot for complex, morally gritty working environments than I do for conspiracies.)  Would he fashion Tony into some kind of fake playboy/real spy persona?  Or would Tony lean into science and work on developing tech for them?  It just seems like a great recipe for a slow build and a look at their dynamic in a different context.
• This could tie into the above, but I also love the Nick Fury cameos: the guy is just obviously everywhere, keeping an eye on everything.  I’d be down for a slightly AU twist where they’ve met many, many times over the years, including pre-canon.  I love age difference ships, so I’m all for Tony Stark, college student and enthusiastic sexual adventurer, and a lower-ranked Nick Fury, sexy and mildly amused recruitment officer, for one thing, but also all variations on this.
• Unconventional dating!  These are not two people who could easily follow any conventional dinner-and-a-movie set-ups, so it would be great to see some awkward, comedic, romantic attempts at the two of them actually trying to develop and sustain a relationship in the midst of missions, global crises, and general weirdness.  I’m a sucker for unusual, character-specific romantic gestures.
• Really any kind of first time story, or any story that looks at them transitioning from friends of benefits into something more: I’d love a close look at how they end up developing probably-unwanted feelings for each other, especially if they don’t even yet trust each other.
• If you’re interested in going explicit, some things that sound especially appealing to me for this pairing are casual D/s, praise kink, Tony Stark’s custom-designed sex toys, voyeurism, teasing, and orgasm delay/denial.

 

 Rope

Rupert Cadell/Brandon Shaw

 

“You always did stutter when you were excited.”  Hell yeah to Brandon’s incredible desire to impress Rupert while evincing a kind of contempt for him, and how expertly Rupert manages him--and how that expertise has limitations that he’s not aware of.  I love the trope of the seeming-sociopath who nonetheless has an intense and often profoundly strange connection with some of the people in their life, and that’s Brandon.  Add in the complex power dynamics, queerness, and murder, and I’m even more interested.  I’d prefer the story set in Brandon’s post-school years because I have an underage squick, but I’m perfectly fine with any allusions/references to any earlier history of their relationship you’d like as long as it’s not explicit, or with having them do student-teacher roleplay, or anything along those lines.

 

Prompts

 

• It’s a nice touch that Brandon and Janet have a little bit of a history.  He takes it pretty cavalierly, so it seems implausible that that contributed at all to him killing David, but the idea of a buried motive of jealousy stuck with me.  What if it was there, but over Rupert, because of some past Rupert/David affair?  Or even Brandon’s jealousy over Rupert paying any attention to David at all?  If Rupert values David’s goodness, does Brandon feel especially betrayed by that?
• Or what about an AU ending where Rupert decides not to look inside the chest?  I feel like he gets off a little too easily when it comes to responsibility for the actual carrying-out of his ideas, and I’m fascinated by Brandon’s assertion that Rupert only doesn’t live up to them because he’s a coward.  That could just be Brandon not understanding principles, but what if it were true, at least on some level?  What would happen if Rupert figured everything out but declined to act on it and confirm what his former students had done with his instruction?  What would the future Rupert/Brandon relationship look like with David’s murder hanging over it?
• I would also be really interested in an AU where Brandon and Rupert are the ones who committed the murder together, and then go through some version of the hide-and-flaunt scenario in the movie, but with Phillip ignorant of it all.  Or even with him being the one they murdered.  I’d be curious to see how they would scheme together and live with the reality of the murder, whether that’s in the context of Brandon living with Phillip (and I’m totally okay with background Brandon/Phillip) or a more AU scenario where he and Rupert live together.
• Really, their dynamic works so well for me that I’d be happy with any story that showcases it, so anything about secrets, power, mentorship, horror, contempt, etc., would be great.
• And if you want to go explicit, so many great kink possibilities here: caning, spanking, humiliation, voyeurism, D/s, praise kink, rope-related breathplay, roleplay, and manipulation/manipulative dubcon.

 

 Vice Principals

Neal Gamby/Lee Russell

 

These two are such a mess.  They’re no doubt a trainwreck--obviously Russell brings out the worst in Gamby, in particular--but they’re a trainwreck with a weird amount of heart that only adds to the brewing tragedy.  [Requisite caveat: At the moment, I’m thinking--maybe naively--that Russell wasn’t responsible for the shooting at the end of season one, despite the many, many clues that suggest he was.  I’m cool with variations on that, though, up to and including him being behind the shooting, as long as there’s at least some genuine emotion to their friendship.  I’m soft.]  I love how their connection grows until they can really be vulnerable with each other and how the sheer awfulness of their plan means that they’re also being remarkably straightforward with each other about what terrible people they are and how unhappy they are.

 

Prompts

 

• I get so much joy from Lee Russell’s wardrobe.  Any excuse for clothes porn involving these two would be incredible.  Russell takes Gamby shopping?  (And then blows him in the fitting room?)  Gamby explores a fascination with Russell’s “fancy pants” clothes, and maybe clues into a crush because of it?
• A more lower-stakes, less entirely-repugnant scheme than the one to oust Brown?  I loved Neal using the brass knuckles on Russell’s neighbor in defense of him, and it would be great to see another incident where they were able to work together and actually be the lesser of two evils, even as they’re still comedically awful and kind of bad at executing their plans.  If you want to go fully redemptive, which I do always love, they could end up working to defend Brown from an outside party, but something like them successfully taking down a particularly obnoxious helicopter parent would also be awesome.
• I’ve spent some time wistfully imagining relatively happy, shippy endings that shouldn’t happen on the show but should totally happen in fic.  An AU where they really had called the plan quits in “Gin” and Gamby had taken the job, and he and Russell end up together with Russell basically becomes a catty faculty husband?  AU where one of them really did get the promotion at the beginning of the show and yet they fall in love through a haze of resentment and later Russell has to sheepishly admit that he burned Gamby’s house down but it was such a long time ago, he doesn’t know why Gamby’s hung up on that?
• These have all skewed happy because I don’t think I’ll wind up getting that from canon, but I’m good with dark, twisty takes on all of these as well, with secrets and betrayals and tortured feelings.  Or I’m good with seeing post-season one finale darkness, with Gamby not knowing if Russell shot him or with them both being plagued by a creepy masked vigilante.
• If you want to go explicit, awesome things for this ship would include: spanking (there’s canonically a paddle on Gamby’s wall!), bad/awkward sex, people getting mussed, begging, praise kink, clothed sex, humiliation, and Gamby fucking Russell on the mattress in the woods.