Chocolate Box 2018
Jan. 2nd, 2018 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scioscribeDear Chocolate Box Author (2018)
Thank you so much for writing for me! I’m scioscribe on Tumblr and AO3. I have complete heart eyes for all of these relationships and am so excited in advance about whatever you’re going to write. All of the below exists in case it’s helpful, but feel completely free to go your own way and create the handcrafted chocolate of your heart. And Happy Valentine’s Day!
Likes
enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, conflicting worldviews and priorities, emotional vulnerability, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, fix-its, Groundhog Day loops, sympathetic bad guys/terrible people with moments of goodness or vulnerability, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, unconventional gestures of affection, partnerships, power dynamics, ambiguously intense relationships, found family, first-time stories, betrayal with reconciliation, character death, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, fake/pretend relationship, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, power couples, age difference, worldbuilding, magical realism, crack played straight, undercover work, loyalty, complicated relationships, codependency, morally gray characters, moral complexity, long relationships that go through a lot of changes, canon-divergence AUs
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include. I generally prefer my ships with at least some streak of romance, affection, or genuine attachment, even if that attachment is complicated or unhealthy.
Sex Likes/Kinks
BDSM, spanking (including breasts, thighs, and pussy), clothed sex, wall-sex, rough sex, dubcon/consent play/ambiguous consent, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, oral fixations, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, hand and finger kink, nipple play, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, talking during sex, emotional sex, enthusiastic sex, tenderness, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or depressing), coming untouched, coming in pants, exhibitionism, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, marking/bruising/biting
DNW
explicit sex for characters under sixteen, mundane AUs, fisting, hospitalization, knotting, scat, vore
Dark Tower
Roland/Eddie/Susannah
One of my all-time favorite OT3s. I adore them and their warm, complicated, sometimes rough-edged relationship with each other. I like that Eddie and Susannah share overlapping memories of their world but are stranded in Roland’s, so they have companionship but he has the greater immediately useful knowledge. I like gunslinger apprentices and their dinh. I like getting into sticky, troubled bits of their dynamic, like Roland’s obsession or his occasional condescension to Eddie.
* Any get-together fic in the The Drawing of the Three/The Waste Lands gap, with the three of them stranded in an idyllic wood (plus or minus a giant mechanical bear) and getting to know each other better. Tentative romantic gestures, or Eddie and Susannah cautiously opening up their marriage to include Roland? Romantic or sexual encounters that get weird as it becomes obvious Roland is losing his mind?
* Susannah becomes Susannah Dean off-the-page, and I’ve always been intrigued by how exactly that conversation went down between her and Eddie where they decided they were married. In a universe where that includes Roland, how does it happen? Do they do any kind of ceremony, however reduced, and is it Mid-World-like or American? Is there some kind of supremely awkward droit du seigneur Gilead tradition where the dinh is supposed to sign off on the marriage by helping the couple consummate it?
* Roland Deschain: king of awkward romantic gestures. I would love anything with him as a failboat romantic partner whose heart is in the right place but who is either always doing things so deeply rooted in Gilead’s culture that Susannah and Eddie have no reference point for them or who is just doing distinctively, Roland-esque weird things. Is he courting them and they’re failing to pick up on it? Are they all already together and he’s just trying to be a good partner? Do they eventually either crack his code or just impatiently seduce him?
* General established relationship stuff I would love for this ship: cuddling/sleeping together, hurt/comfort, bondage, gunplay/knifeplay, Jake slowly putting the pieces together, service kink, kneeling, hair-stroking, bathing together, talking about scars.
Roland & Eddie & Susannah & Jake
I just really love the ka-tet and want to spend more time with them. I love all the individual relationships here and also the dynamic of the four of them together and how they all bounce off each other. I like the wrinkles and complications, like the painful history of Roland letting Jake fall, and their occasional disagreements or differing priorities. I love Susannah, Eddie, and Jake learning more about Mid-World and Roland learning more about New York. Loyalty kink! High fantasy adventure! Mild group telepathy! It’s all awesome. Feel free to bend the timeline, imagine divergences, or set the story in some future rotation.
* I would love to see the rest of the ka-tet showing Roland around New York, even just as a snippet of calm in the middle of some kind of dangerous adventure. What if it’s something only one of the ka-tet members is really familiar with, or if it’s a part of Earth that they know by reputation but not in person? What if they land in 2017 New York?
* Gestures of affection! I am very sentimental about these four and would take any kind of excuse for group hugs and more subtle, unconventional gestures. I love all stripes of hurt/comfort, so if you injure one/some/all of them and let the comforting commence, I will be endlessly happy. I also really love gift-giving and have a deep soft spot for Eddie’s woodcarving.
* Roland, Susannah, and Eddie as Jake’s unconventional parents, either watching him grow up in Mid-World and experiencing little typical late kid/early teen snags or whether they end up on Earth in the aftermath of a saved Tower, three adults with PTSD trying to raise their PTSD son.
* Magical mishaps happen and they all have to deal. They accidentally time travel back to Gilead at its cultural peak? Eddie gets de-aged to his early teens and wants to know where the hell his brother is? Jake is having bad dreams that may or may not be visions? Susannah pulls an Orpheus and ventures into the afterlife to get her friends back?
The Hateful Eight
Marquis Warren/Chris Mannix
I love these two murderous assholes and their eventual surprising fondness for each other, complete with loyalty kink and D/s overtones and basically everything I could want in an enemies-to-lovers ship (including the potential for ongoing conflict even after they’re together). I love how smart and strategic Warren is, and how well he can manipulate people; I love Mannix’s weird cheerfulness and his becoming a very slightly better person but still by no means a good person. I just adore their entire dynamic.
* I like both of the popular fanon fix-it futures--the one where they both become bounty hunters and the one where it’s bounty hunter/sheriff--and I’m okay with just taking either of those as established ground for shippy moments, whether those are first times or parts of an established relationship. Some things I particularly like for these two are: casual/unnegotiated BDSM, stitching-each-other-up and other stripes of hurt/comfort, bathing together, sleeping in the same bed, huddling/cuddling for warmth, unconventional gestures of affection, blowjobs, and all kinds of kink.
* Mannix’s dad is still alive. Warren wants to correct that. Mannix has more complicated feelings. Obviously, with a three hundred word minimum, you don’t have to cover the entire arc of all that if you don’t want to: I’d love any check-in at any point on the “if you really loved me, you’d let me kill your dad” horror-hilarity.
* They end up in another uncertain, perilous situation, and Warren has to improvise backstories/cover identities/lies for them both: I just really adore the idea of watching him come up with live-action Lincoln letters in real-time, as it were, and with him having to do it with Mannix, who has the advantage of clicking with him surprisingly well but who also has the potential to be the world’s worst improv partner in every other respect.
* Given all the things they’ve done, maybe there really is a bounty on one of them out there somewhere. Another bounty hunter starts tailing them, tries to nab one of them, or takes a shot at them from a distance? They’re low on money so Warren turns Mannix in for a bounty and then breaks him out again? Warren gets grabbed by a John Ruth always-bring-them-in-alive type and is therefore in dire straits personally but also rankled professionally?
Mansfield Park
Mary Crawford/Fanny Price
I reread this recently and shipped these two so much. The contrast in their worldviews and personalities! Mary defending Fanny from Mrs. Norris’s criticism! Fanny thinking Mary is excessively pretty! The tension over Edmund, and the idea that they could be projecting onto him as an acceptable love interest in lieu of the one they actually want (especially great with Mary, given that Edmund himself points out the “sometimes a man will act like he’s interested in the sister of the woman he’s really interested in” idea)! I just love their blend of sparks, conflict, and sincere admiration.
* I love the idea of them losing their virginity together when they have no difference in their level of actual sexual experience but a tremendous difference in their levels of sexual awareness. Fanny has no idea what they’re even “supposed” to do, aside from what she wants to do, which could in fact be gloriously weird; Mary has false bravado. I love awkward sex, especially awkward first-time sex where there’s the potential for it to be really revealing: what do they try? Do they do anything that isn’t part of the normal playbook? What’s it like for them to discover each other’s bodies and preferences?
* Any moment of Fanny beginning to change her mind about Mary’s character. We see Mary growing to respect and like Fanny, and I’d love to see something similar from the other side, where Fanny starts to discern and understand Mary’s principles, even if she still doesn’t agree with them, and how this might open her up to falling in love with Mary after all.
* Instead of Henry vowing to make Fanny fall in love with him, Mary vows to make Fanny think of her as her closest friend, so she spends months cultivating their relationship and acting more in line with Fanny’s beliefs, but while she’s pretending, she starts to genuinely become a better person and also feels her “friendship” cross over into something much more complicated.
* Mary, not Henry, goes to visit Fanny when she’s in Portsmouth, and is affected by what she sees there to the point of attempting to rescue Fanny from her stress and poor health by either inviting her away somewhere or by inserting herself into the life and circumstances of the Price family. How does Fanny feel about her glamorous quasi-friend seeing her family’s circumstances? Does it cause tension between them that then comes to a head with a kiss? Or does it go well, letting them slide into love less contentiously?
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Nick Fury/Tony Stark
I love their mutual skepticism about each other and how that gradually changes into something more appreciative and attached. The contrast between Tony’s history of devil-may-care attitude and Fury-as-voice-of-establishment is great, as is the complexity you get when you realize that’s not entirely true: Fury barely trusts anyone and constantly works on his own, especially once he’s off-the-grid, and Tony is really attached to the idea of the Avengers as a concept. They just have so much awesome, built-in conflict and such great loyalty kink potential. I’m also used to weird, messy comics timelines with multiple variations, so feel free to diverge from the MCU timeline/events.
* Fury recruits a pre-Iron Man Tony to work at SHIELD, either full-time or in a contracting capacity. Does he recruit Tony when they’re both much younger--college-aged genius with daddy issues unsurprisingly falls for older, mid-ranked, sexy, mildly amused recruiting officer?--or later, and how does he talk him into it? What would it be like for Tony to be working the Batman angle with his playboy image as a cover? Or does he go full-on science geek and work in SHIELD labs and tech-design? I’m with deducing backstory if you just want to jump into a snippet of shippy interaction anywhere in any of these kinds of scenarios.
* Unconventional dating! These are two people who do not have the schedules, the straightforwardness, or the normal emotional expression to make a habit out of just doing dinner and a movie. I’d love to see some romantic comedy mishaps and triumphs of the two of them trying to flirt or have a relationship in the midst of global crises, missions, and general weirdness. I’m a sucker for unconventional romantic gestures.
* Nick Fury cameos, the Sexy Edition. Fury has been popping up in Tony’s life for years, either deliberately (because he wants to keep an eye on this high-profile weapons manufacturer) or just because he is everywhere, and they keep having either flirtatious run-ins or one-night stands with no follow-up because of Tony’s playboy side and/or Fury’s enigmatic disappearing acts, until eventually the “who is this guy?” factor starts to drive Tony crazy.
* I’m not specifically into daddy kink (where the characters are aware of it and use the actual word), but I’d be totally down for seeing Fury consciously play on Tony’s father issues with some praise kink and strategic emotional withholding, both for sexy and strategy.
* The aftermath of intense missions or crises, with or without hurt/comfort (and I’d love either of them as the hurt person or the comforter, or the two of them in both roles simultaneously) where the comfort has a lot of indirect expression--either reserved or low-key, or “I upgraded your house’s security settings without telling you,” or physical touch without a lot of conversation, etc.
Nick Fury/Natasha Romanov
I am really, really into handler/spy or spymaster/spy relationships, and this is one of my all-time favorites. I love the strange moral positioning they end up with, where Natasha is looking for redemption in an agency that’s still morally compromised, and where she still accepts that she’ll have to do some covert, shady things; where Fury might love her and still have to keep sending her out into dangerous situations because she’s the best person for them even if it gets her killed. And they have all the loyalty/trust kink issues and complications, too! Natasha’s obvious pain at finding out that Fury didn’t trust her enough to include her in his fake death plans! Their shared general reserve and the way they use humor to cover for things! Cool spy adventures!
* I got a delightful fake-marriage Fury/Natasha treat last year and it made me want all possible variations on this idea. Seriously, all of them. Masquerading as a couple as part of a job? Faking a secret relationship in a moment of lightheartedness just to screw with everyone’s heads? Anything that puts them in a situation where they just have to act like they love each other until, of course, they really do.
* I’d love digging into the complications of their relationship starting after Winter Soldier: maybe they end up having to stay together while they’re lying low, and there’s a lot of tension between them because she’s angry that he didn’t trust her more? I just love adding a touch of simmering resentment and hurt to this particular cocktail. But I’m also completely happy with the two of them just sometimes traveling together as they’re trying to avoid being noticed, especially since they know that they’d technically be more low-profile staying apart.
* I would also love anything set early on in their relationship. What were their interactions like when she first started working for SHIELD? (I’m okay with UST for that one.) What about when he’s sending her out on missions? I love “handler as the voice in your ear” and hurt/comfort in the aftermath of spy assignments, especially if it gets complicated because the comforter is the person who effectively got you hurt and part of the hurt is the guilt of having done something really morally dubious.
* Similarly, I’d love to see hurt/comfort with Fury hurt from a mission or an assassination attempt and Natasha in the comforting role, possibly feeling a little awkward in it. She just assigns herself as his bodyguard and starts staking out his apartment? I really like watching people who are bad with feelings trying to negotiate having them for each other.
Nick Fury/Loki
I am all over this: there’s something about the combination of “highly pragmatic realist with big-picture-only ethics” and “chaotic trickster Shakespearean supervillain” that is just awesome. Loki has complicated feelings about people with eyepatches! They’re both prone to making deals they absolutely never plan to honor and both go off on their own at a moments notice! Obviously I like the shades of gray here--for these two, I’m especially fond of a complicated middle ground, neither fluff nor total “one of us just sold the other out permanently” darkfic.
* Flirtation through the glass wall of a prison cell, either just for kicks or as part of a quid pro quo haggling session, or, the explicit variation, flirtation through the glass wall of a prison cell that leads to kinky voyeuristic pleasure through the glass wall of a prison cell, with one or both of them delighting in a little self-action knowing that it’s having an effect on the other.
* Reluctant partnership to take down some bigger threat: anything that could plausibly have Loki hanging around Earth for a while in Fury’s company and the two of them accidentally bonding over repartee and the ability to come up with worst-case scenarios. I love inadvertent cultural and personal cross-pollination here, so things like “Fury starts occasionally sounding like Shakespeare in the Park” to “Loki starts making pissy comments about people Fury dislikes” are always fun. I’d love this for either SHIELD-era Fury or lone-wolf-HYDRA-hunting Fury, and as an official or extremely unofficial arrangement.
* Vaguely post-Ragnarok, Loki’s back on Earth and trying to not try to conquer it, and Fury is circling around the Avengers and the Asgardians trying to get a feel for the situation and, in particular, a feel for this returned and ostensibly sort of reformed Loki. Since Fury has recruited former enemies before, he’s obviously not above giving clandestine second chances to people he feels could be useful (especially if he comes to like them), and I love the idea of him starting to consider that with Loki. Tricksters would make natural spies, after all. And Fury should probably check to see whether Loki’s good enough in bed to pull off a honeypot operation…
* Early Thor AU where Loki ends up on Earth pre-major villainy, whether willingly (just for his own entertainment) or unwillingly (Odin realizes Loki tipped off the Frost Giants and temporarily banishes him, not Thor), and runs into Fury. I like the idea of the two of them having the character flaws to work through but not necessarily the same history, and also just of Fury getting kind of a kick out of interacting with (and eventually bedding) his first alien. I’d also love to see Fury on Asgard during this period for some reason, and the two of them hitting it off--easily or more combatively--there.
* Kink: tying up/gagging/collaring Loki, silver-tongued dirty talk, marking/bruising/biting, voyeurism, orgasm delay/denial.
Hela/Valkyrie
This would be so sizzlingly hot, and it has so much potential for darkness and tragedy. I love the sense of history between the two of them, as the only two characters we see who definitely lived through Asgard’s establishing of its empire, who probably fought together and then eventually fought against each other. I love Valkyrie’s bitterness and survivor’s guilt and Hela’s combination of dominance and insecurity. They’re just such a rich ship.
* Anything set before Asgard’s reformation. What was the relationship between the Valkyries and Odin’s heir and executioner? Sisters-in-arms with mutual respect and wartime hookups in the midst of world-conquering? I love frantic we’re-alive sex and people falling together while covered in mud or blood or, in this case, weird magical after-effects that might make you especially aroused. Or since the Valkyries were sworn to the throne of Asgard, was Brunnhilde ever basically Hela’s bodyguard? Was there pining?
* Val was a soldier, and she never says anything one way or the other on how she felt about Asgard limiting its wars, so what if it had rankled her too and she had joined up with Hela and they’d been banished together? Or fought together and won, even? I’d totally take the two of them ruling Asgard as warrior queens and trying to conquer the universe, complete with all the dubious morality of that: do they plan to rule what they’ve conquered, strip out resources, or just indiscriminately slaughter everyone?
* A bent-timeline encounter between the two of them before the climactic battle--two enemies who know they’re about to try to kill each other and having a quick fumble with weird, ambiguous feelings? Hela tries to recruit Val to her side of things and adds sex as an incentive?
* What if Hela had been the one to get pushed from the Bifrost and she had landed in Sakaar, soon to come face-to-face with the Grandmaster’s favorite scavenger? That far from Asgard, are Hela’s powers weak enough that she could be contained, but not quite weak enough for her to be easily defeated? I’d love to see the two of them squaring off, neither able to defeat the other, and so eventually finding some other way to relieve all that tension and aggression. Gladiatorial combat followed by sex, or gladiatorial sex in the arena, or whatever you like.
Bruce Banner & Loki
Bruce Banner/Loki
I adore this one as either enemies-to-lovers or enemies-to-friends or enemies-to-uneasy-allies (sexy or platonic). I just really love that Loki was on the same planet as the Hulk for weeks without noticing and then his immediate response is to finding that out is to scheme to get as far away as possible; I love Bruce asking him if he’s still trying to kill everyone. Since I’m so fresh off Thor: Ragnarok, my prompts all go in that direction, but feel absolutely free to set this whenever you like. I’m also totally okay with any Hulking out.
* Loki lands on Sakaar and ends up in the arena, where he’s supposed to use magic for showy fights; he’s beyond terrified to run into the Hulk in the ring or out of it. Are their matches interesting enough for Loki to end up in the penthouse too? Can he use magic to calm the Hulk down into being Bruce again--either eventually or right away? And what’s Bruce’s reaction to realizing who he’s stranded with?
* Post-Ragnarok, Bruce eventually comes back to himself, but it’s still a long journey to Earth and he’s stuck as the only human on a ship full of alien refugees. I love the idea of him awkwardly bonding more with Loki just because Loki is one of the few people there he knows--and one who has an active interest in not making him angry--and maybe taking a suspicious interest in Loki’s attempt at reinventing himself. Does he relate at all? (He is, presumably, fresh off years of killing enslaved gladiators--he has to have his own very recent residual guilt.) Do they end up collaborating on Asgardian civil projects together and find they actually kind of get along?
* Rough, antagonistic sex? Awkward, surprisingly nice sex? Does Bruce like restraints as a metaphorical thing even if he knows they won’t actually stop the Hulk? How much can they get themselves to trust each other in bed?
* I love characters who have a relationship where the only gestures of affection they’re ever likely to make would be weird and specific to their relationship, whether those gestures are romantic or indications of friendship, and these two definitely qualify. A Hulk-out where the Hulk has actually gotten kind of fond of Loki? Bruce trying to teach Loki literally any strategy of dealing with anger or resentment? Loki giving Bruce a peek behind the magic-is-science curtain?
Loki & Valkyrie & Sif & Thor & Heimdall
I love alien cultures, alien values, and cultures in flight clinging to whatever they have left: the ship full of Asgardians out looking for a new home is perfect fic fodder for me. I would love any variation on these five hanging out in space, on Earth, or on some other planet, trying to deal with what to hold on and what they’ll have to let go of, trying to govern, trying to deal with their collective trauma, or just trying to adjust in general. I like the spread of characters here too: Loki, the one nobody entirely trusts; Valkyrie, the one nobody entirely knows, and the one who remembers an Asgard they never saw; Sif, who’s been out of the loop; Thor, who’s making a hard transition from rakish wandering prince and superhero to actual king; and Heimdall, who is a stable point in a no longer stable society. There’s just so much potential there.
* Asgardian culture on the brink of destruction. I’d love to see the five of them attempting to fulfill or preserve some kind of ceremony or ritual, maybe without having all the resources for it, or to see them attempting to fill roles that they weren’t entirely prepared for (Thor as king, Sif as a new Valkyrie, Loki as advisor) and maybe don’t want (how does Val feel about being pulled back into all this?).
* Odin said Hela’s powers, like Thor’s, were tied to Asgard, so now that Asgard has been destroyed, what does that mean? Is Thor going to find his powers fading, and if so, does he tell his inner council that or try to conceal it? Is Loki losing his magic, or is that different because of his Jotun heritage? If it’s different, is there more conflict or mistrust that would come from Loki keeping his magic while Thor’s diminished? Would Heimdall still be able to see everything without the Bifrost or Asgard? Just anything with a character’s loss hitting them physically as well, and everyone else having to deal with that.
* Court and/or council business, on the spaceship or elsewhere. They have a lot of decisions to make and a lot of conflicts to settle, so how do they go about it? What if they didn’t immediately choose Earth as a destination and had to spend some time deciding where to go? I’d happily read about anything from them dealing with supply problems to criminal justice to “what kind of history of Asgard are we supposed to preserve?”
* Melancholy hangouts where they discuss what they have left of home or where they reminisce together. Are they able to all find enough common ground there, or do tensions arise even in mourning their shared loss? I like all kinds of fights--physical, vicious interpersonal, etc.--and I like them even more when everyone still has to keep living together and working together after them, so it’s all kind of awkward.
Original Work
Female Bodyguard/Female Musician
I have a soft spot for f/f butch bodyguard/femme singer with high mutual physical appreciation, in particular, but any variation on this is still excellent. I really love the potential for these two to dislike or not understand each other at first and to have a little bit of a bumpy working relationship until they realize each other’s competence. I like all variations on musician for this--highly-managed pop star, indie sensation, folk artist, classical violinist--so feel free to take this in whatever direction you like.
* Why does the singer need a bodyguard? Has her life actually been threatened, or is she just at the level of stardom where they become fairly mandatory? Is she scared, resentful, blithely confident nothing will happen? And what does the bodyguard think of the job? Did she want it because she liked the singer’s work or is it just another way to pay the rent? Is she running the risk of not taking the job seriously until something happens?
* The bodyguard gets hurt protecting the musician and awesome hurt/comfort ensues, possibly followed by thank-God-we’re-alive sex? Does the musician have a stalker who picks up on the changed vibes between the bodyguard and the musician after they get together and who then gets determined to take their competition out of the picture? Do they end up in a situation where they both have to fight/think their way out of danger?
* The musician starts writing a song for her bodyguard, with or without the bodyguard knowing it. Is it how she declares Feelings? When does the bodyguard realize that she’s the subject of the song?
* Mutual admiration: sparring, target practice, “let me teach you how to shoot which requires me to put my arms around you and move your legs to correct your stance,” listening to a concert from backstage, being appreciative of high-life glamor, being appreciative of muscles. Friction from the musician being the employer at the same time as the bodyguard is more physically capable, from the stress of being in danger, from possible class issues.
* Smut welcome. I’d love anything in my likes and body appreciation, holding someone up against a wall, bruises/marking, rough sex, and emotional sex are ones that seem extra-appropriate to me for this pairing. But seriously, anything.
Female Confidential Informant/Her Female Handler
Female Petty Criminal/Female Cop
I’m putting both of these together because my prompts are flexible enough to cover both, and because I could easily see them being the same pairing: the petty criminal becomes an informant and the cop is her handler. But this set-up is one of my favorites, so truly, I’d love any variation on either of these. I like opposite-sides-of-the-law pairings and morally gray characters--handlers who might be endangering their informants, cops who might be on the take--and I like the worry, anger, fear, and disappointment that comes up in a relationship where one half is perpetually hoping the other half will get their life in order.
* Off that last bit, does the cop or handler want her criminal informant to get her life together? Is she trying to help? If she’s the handler, or if she otherwise sometimes uses the criminal for information, does she have to deal with some mixed feelings about how this will mean losing a point of access? I’m all for moral dilemmas and the opportunity to make terrible decisions, whether that’s intentionally pushing a vulnerable person back to crime or potentially scuppering a huge investigation because you want to save your girlfriend.
* How did the two of them meet? Did the criminal make the first move, approaching the cop or handler in hopes of making money or getting some kind of justice? Did the cop or handler recruit or befriend them, and if so, what drew them to each other? Was it careful--a literal or metaphorical seduction--or a spontaneous befriending that became something more?
* True love means you help bury the body, right? I’d love to see the more legally-minded half of the relationship getting drawn into crimes or their cover-ups, whether those are relatively harmless or justified or much darker. How do they feel about covering things up or making problems go away? Do the criminals feel like they owe them something for this?
* Wiretap voyeurism, handcuffs, D/s, rough sex, surprisingly tender sex, implicit sexual bargaining, complicated feelings of debt and responsibility and manipulation and taking advantage.
Female Cop Undercover in a BDSM Club/Female Werewolf
This has to be one of the best pairing ideas of all time. I love undercover tropes and “undercover in a BDSM club” tropes and I love werewolves; this is definitely a match made in my id. Bring it on and throw every cliche at me you like. Leather jackets. People discovering or admitting sexual desires they’d never known about/explored before. “Due to the labyrinthine requirements of this club, we have to do a scene together because Reasons.” Werewolves pack-bonding with humans; werewolves turning humans into werewolves accidentally or consensually.
Pairing specific DNW: sex in wolf form.
* Does the cop suspect the werewolf of a crime? (Or of being a werewolf, depending on whether or not werewolves are a known phenomenon?) Does she intend to use some kind of club interaction to find out? Does the werewolf sense that she’s a cop--from her smell or from her demeanor? Are they both trying to manipulate each other, or do they come together by chance and the cop doesn’t find out she’s ended up with a werewolf until it suddenly gets revealed?
* The werewolf is in the BDSM club partly because she doesn’t have a pack and it’s reassuring to be around more structured roles: she’s all too happy to claim the undercover cop as her alpha or to take on the role of alpha to her, and the cop has no clue what she’s getting into and that she’s signing up for a more permanent connection, complete with a pack-bond. Does the werewolf turn the cop? Does she want to? Does the cop want her to? What happens if they have sex and then form some kind of closeness-required connection accidentally?
* Whatever the cop is there for, she didn’t expect to stumble across a wolf killing someone who had crossed the line into serious, unasked-for injury or rape, but now she’s been saddled with a dead body, a werewolf, and a lot of unrelieved sexual tension, and the werewolf has to decide whether or not to let this witness go. Maybe she can be convinced not to talk.
* The cop is allowed a lot of leeway on what she does undercover as long as no actual sex is had, so she and the werewolf can do all kinds of things as long as neither one of them has an orgasm, which is fine by the werewolf, because she has very good reasons to not want to lose control. Does one of them break, or do they have tons of orgasm-denial kink?
Female Werewolf Pack Leader/Female Werewolf Pack Member
Werewolves are my favorite stripe of urban fantasy, and I love werewolf worldbuilding, whatever kind of werewolves you choose to go with or invent. I love pack-bonds and people acting off animal instincts while in human form, I love possessiveness and the need to be close, I love heightened senses of smell, I love loyalty kink. Note for this pairing: I’m totally fine with wolf-form sex being mentioned/alluded to, but I’d prefer no explicit depictions of it. Human-on-human sex with animalistic behavior is 100% okay.
* How did the pack form, and how did the pack member join up? Were they attracted to each other from the start and have sex right away, or did it build up slowly? Did they have sex in wolf form but shrug it off because everybody has sex in wolf form? What was the bonding process between the two of them? Biting, nuzzling, marking, claiming? Is the pack member a new enough werewolf that she’s worried she’s the only one who thought that was erotic and that the pack leader just thinks it’s wolves being wolves?
* Did the pack leader turn the pack member? If so, why? Were they already together and making a deliberate choice? Did the pack leader need to turn her to control or help her in some way (make it less likely that she’d publicly reveal the existence of werewolves, heal her, give her super-strength to get the both of them out of some bad situation)?
* I love highly organized societies, including societies with biological drives and/or imperatives, so what separates the werewolves from humans as far as their instincts and traditions go? Is it common to arrange marriages outside of the pack to keep the bloodlines fresh, and the pack leader feels horribly conflicted about wanting to mate within her own pack? What makes them turn into wolves, and how could it tie into their relationship? What kind of loyalty automatically exists between the two of them, and what kind is by choice?
Vice Principals
Neal Gamby/Lee Russell
These two are such a mess--but they’re a trainwreck with heart, despite all the tragedy and chaos they bring about. I loved watching their connection grow into something genuine, and I love how the awfulness that brought them together lets them have complete honesty with each other about all of their worst impulses, and that that can be good as well as bad. I love their pettiness and terrible plans. I love Lee’s attempted Machiavellian schemes and Neal’s straightforwardness. I love their weird journeys to being better people.
* I get so much joy from Lee Russell’s wardrobe and would love anything that gave him and Gamby the clothes-shopping montage Gamby and Abbott got in season two. Lee decides Neal seriously needs a makeover, and takes him to the mall? It’s post-canon and he decides to test out his retail skills by doing a complete fitting? Does someone get a blowjob in a fitting room? Does Neal clue into a crush because he realizes he really likes Lee’s “fancy pants” clothes, and how Lee looks in them?
* Post-canon, the two of them end up in a different, less terrible scheme, maybe to get revenge on Lee’s sisters or defuse some particularly awful helicopter parent. I’d love to see them getting up to all kinds of criminal hijinks while still being the lesser of two evils, especially if it feels like a midlife crisis rehash to them and Lee keeps complaining that it’s weak bullshit.
* Canon-divergence AU where Gamby did take the job Brown offered him near the end of season one, and Russell quit and hooked up with him as a catty faculty husband? AU where Neal got the job at the beginning of season one but they fall in love through a haze of resentment and weird occurrences and Russell eventually admits that okay, yes, he burned Neal’s house down, but it was such a long time ago and he thinks Neal shouldn’t still be hung up on it?
* Russell gets shot in the head and becomes a better person! I love the idea of those two things being correlated in a not-at-all realistic way, so I would totally take a Lee post-shooting who is a lot calmer and more affable, and a lot more affectionate, to the point where Neal finds it unnerving. Also post-shooting--either shooting! or the tiger mauling!--hurt/comfort with sarcastic banter and feel-better sex.
* Rarely have I felt so deprived of anything as I did by the two of them never canonically having sex on that mattress in the woods. I would go for that in combination with any of these prompt or just on its own. Ditto spanking with the GET IT paddle.
You’re the Worst
Gretchen/Lindsay
My most beloved style of romance is “assholes in love.” You’re the Worst provides a wonderful canon version with Gretchen/Jimmy, and I would love to see fic fulfill my deep-seated desire for Gretchen/Lindsay. I love their petty awfulness and garbage-monster behavior, from the abuse of a froyo sample policy to an attempted turkey-baster baby-trap. They have the potential for great dramatic tension, with Gretchen trying at least a little to grow and change and Lindsay mostly being content to wallow (until they veer towards switching roles), and they also have a great, long history, with both withering sarcasm and genuine warmth and affection.
* College days! Lindsay specifically mentions watching Gretchen deal with her depression back then, and it would be interesting and even touching to see how she first clued in and then tried to help. (Knowing Lindsay, probably with a combination of drugs and attempted magical healing sex.)
* What if Gretchen, feeling down after Becca’s wedding in the pilot, had gone home with Lindsay instead of Jimmy? (Lindsay can just… not be married to Paul, if you like, or else, in true You’re the Worst fashion, their divorce can be hastily ensured by Lindsay bringing Gretchen home for a boozy and torrid one-night stand with her husband literally right there.) Would they be able to connect romantically too? They both have mutual terribleness and shared fluctuating levels of conscience and regret. What would one of the show’s storylines look like filtered through them instead of Gretchen/Jimmy?
* An AU where Lindsay is one of Gretchen’s publicity clients, maybe a spoiled and ditzy former backup singer now trying to make it on her own? I have a weak spot for really tropey romance novel plots like this one, so free to take that admission to rewrite the most Harlequin of Harlequin scenarios, whatever you can think of, and I’ll probably eat it up with a spoon. Rich-Lindsay and personal assistant-Gretchen? Both of them as sugar baby hangers-on to rich guys who find themselves more and more interested in each other?
* Any kind of post-season three get-together fic, when they're both single and living together in a tiny apartment. What sets off a change in their relationship? Does Gretchen start to think of Lindsay in a different light when she sees her at work, competent for once? Does a fight over their mutual frustrations lead to one of them jumping the other's bones? I can just see Gretchen impulsively sleeping with Lindsay to get out of a conversation about why she's still not leaving the apartment, or seeing her as a slightly healthier alternative to doing some more crack. Basically, just all the simmering tension exploding into hot sex and feelings.
* Any of the above, with porn, or just porn, ideally with feelings mixed in. Oral? Strap-ons? Wild, wacky, and sometimes wildly successful experimentation with different positions and toys? Costumes? Dirty talk? Public sex? (Hooking up in season two's haunted house?) Anal? Some casual BDSM?
Thank you so much for writing for me! I’m scioscribe on Tumblr and AO3. I have complete heart eyes for all of these relationships and am so excited in advance about whatever you’re going to write. All of the below exists in case it’s helpful, but feel completely free to go your own way and create the handcrafted chocolate of your heart. And Happy Valentine’s Day!
Likes
enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, conflicting worldviews and priorities, emotional vulnerability, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, fix-its, Groundhog Day loops, sympathetic bad guys/terrible people with moments of goodness or vulnerability, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, unconventional gestures of affection, partnerships, power dynamics, ambiguously intense relationships, found family, first-time stories, betrayal with reconciliation, character death, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, fake/pretend relationship, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, power couples, age difference, worldbuilding, magical realism, crack played straight, undercover work, loyalty, complicated relationships, codependency, morally gray characters, moral complexity, long relationships that go through a lot of changes, canon-divergence AUs
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include. I generally prefer my ships with at least some streak of romance, affection, or genuine attachment, even if that attachment is complicated or unhealthy.
Sex Likes/Kinks
BDSM, spanking (including breasts, thighs, and pussy), clothed sex, wall-sex, rough sex, dubcon/consent play/ambiguous consent, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, oral fixations, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, hand and finger kink, nipple play, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, talking during sex, emotional sex, enthusiastic sex, tenderness, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or depressing), coming untouched, coming in pants, exhibitionism, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, marking/bruising/biting
DNW
explicit sex for characters under sixteen, mundane AUs, fisting, hospitalization, knotting, scat, vore
Dark Tower
Roland/Eddie/Susannah
One of my all-time favorite OT3s. I adore them and their warm, complicated, sometimes rough-edged relationship with each other. I like that Eddie and Susannah share overlapping memories of their world but are stranded in Roland’s, so they have companionship but he has the greater immediately useful knowledge. I like gunslinger apprentices and their dinh. I like getting into sticky, troubled bits of their dynamic, like Roland’s obsession or his occasional condescension to Eddie.
* Any get-together fic in the The Drawing of the Three/The Waste Lands gap, with the three of them stranded in an idyllic wood (plus or minus a giant mechanical bear) and getting to know each other better. Tentative romantic gestures, or Eddie and Susannah cautiously opening up their marriage to include Roland? Romantic or sexual encounters that get weird as it becomes obvious Roland is losing his mind?
* Susannah becomes Susannah Dean off-the-page, and I’ve always been intrigued by how exactly that conversation went down between her and Eddie where they decided they were married. In a universe where that includes Roland, how does it happen? Do they do any kind of ceremony, however reduced, and is it Mid-World-like or American? Is there some kind of supremely awkward droit du seigneur Gilead tradition where the dinh is supposed to sign off on the marriage by helping the couple consummate it?
* Roland Deschain: king of awkward romantic gestures. I would love anything with him as a failboat romantic partner whose heart is in the right place but who is either always doing things so deeply rooted in Gilead’s culture that Susannah and Eddie have no reference point for them or who is just doing distinctively, Roland-esque weird things. Is he courting them and they’re failing to pick up on it? Are they all already together and he’s just trying to be a good partner? Do they eventually either crack his code or just impatiently seduce him?
* General established relationship stuff I would love for this ship: cuddling/sleeping together, hurt/comfort, bondage, gunplay/knifeplay, Jake slowly putting the pieces together, service kink, kneeling, hair-stroking, bathing together, talking about scars.
Roland & Eddie & Susannah & Jake
I just really love the ka-tet and want to spend more time with them. I love all the individual relationships here and also the dynamic of the four of them together and how they all bounce off each other. I like the wrinkles and complications, like the painful history of Roland letting Jake fall, and their occasional disagreements or differing priorities. I love Susannah, Eddie, and Jake learning more about Mid-World and Roland learning more about New York. Loyalty kink! High fantasy adventure! Mild group telepathy! It’s all awesome. Feel free to bend the timeline, imagine divergences, or set the story in some future rotation.
* I would love to see the rest of the ka-tet showing Roland around New York, even just as a snippet of calm in the middle of some kind of dangerous adventure. What if it’s something only one of the ka-tet members is really familiar with, or if it’s a part of Earth that they know by reputation but not in person? What if they land in 2017 New York?
* Gestures of affection! I am very sentimental about these four and would take any kind of excuse for group hugs and more subtle, unconventional gestures. I love all stripes of hurt/comfort, so if you injure one/some/all of them and let the comforting commence, I will be endlessly happy. I also really love gift-giving and have a deep soft spot for Eddie’s woodcarving.
* Roland, Susannah, and Eddie as Jake’s unconventional parents, either watching him grow up in Mid-World and experiencing little typical late kid/early teen snags or whether they end up on Earth in the aftermath of a saved Tower, three adults with PTSD trying to raise their PTSD son.
* Magical mishaps happen and they all have to deal. They accidentally time travel back to Gilead at its cultural peak? Eddie gets de-aged to his early teens and wants to know where the hell his brother is? Jake is having bad dreams that may or may not be visions? Susannah pulls an Orpheus and ventures into the afterlife to get her friends back?
The Hateful Eight
Marquis Warren/Chris Mannix
I love these two murderous assholes and their eventual surprising fondness for each other, complete with loyalty kink and D/s overtones and basically everything I could want in an enemies-to-lovers ship (including the potential for ongoing conflict even after they’re together). I love how smart and strategic Warren is, and how well he can manipulate people; I love Mannix’s weird cheerfulness and his becoming a very slightly better person but still by no means a good person. I just adore their entire dynamic.
* I like both of the popular fanon fix-it futures--the one where they both become bounty hunters and the one where it’s bounty hunter/sheriff--and I’m okay with just taking either of those as established ground for shippy moments, whether those are first times or parts of an established relationship. Some things I particularly like for these two are: casual/unnegotiated BDSM, stitching-each-other-up and other stripes of hurt/comfort, bathing together, sleeping in the same bed, huddling/cuddling for warmth, unconventional gestures of affection, blowjobs, and all kinds of kink.
* Mannix’s dad is still alive. Warren wants to correct that. Mannix has more complicated feelings. Obviously, with a three hundred word minimum, you don’t have to cover the entire arc of all that if you don’t want to: I’d love any check-in at any point on the “if you really loved me, you’d let me kill your dad” horror-hilarity.
* They end up in another uncertain, perilous situation, and Warren has to improvise backstories/cover identities/lies for them both: I just really adore the idea of watching him come up with live-action Lincoln letters in real-time, as it were, and with him having to do it with Mannix, who has the advantage of clicking with him surprisingly well but who also has the potential to be the world’s worst improv partner in every other respect.
* Given all the things they’ve done, maybe there really is a bounty on one of them out there somewhere. Another bounty hunter starts tailing them, tries to nab one of them, or takes a shot at them from a distance? They’re low on money so Warren turns Mannix in for a bounty and then breaks him out again? Warren gets grabbed by a John Ruth always-bring-them-in-alive type and is therefore in dire straits personally but also rankled professionally?
Mansfield Park
Mary Crawford/Fanny Price
I reread this recently and shipped these two so much. The contrast in their worldviews and personalities! Mary defending Fanny from Mrs. Norris’s criticism! Fanny thinking Mary is excessively pretty! The tension over Edmund, and the idea that they could be projecting onto him as an acceptable love interest in lieu of the one they actually want (especially great with Mary, given that Edmund himself points out the “sometimes a man will act like he’s interested in the sister of the woman he’s really interested in” idea)! I just love their blend of sparks, conflict, and sincere admiration.
* I love the idea of them losing their virginity together when they have no difference in their level of actual sexual experience but a tremendous difference in their levels of sexual awareness. Fanny has no idea what they’re even “supposed” to do, aside from what she wants to do, which could in fact be gloriously weird; Mary has false bravado. I love awkward sex, especially awkward first-time sex where there’s the potential for it to be really revealing: what do they try? Do they do anything that isn’t part of the normal playbook? What’s it like for them to discover each other’s bodies and preferences?
* Any moment of Fanny beginning to change her mind about Mary’s character. We see Mary growing to respect and like Fanny, and I’d love to see something similar from the other side, where Fanny starts to discern and understand Mary’s principles, even if she still doesn’t agree with them, and how this might open her up to falling in love with Mary after all.
* Instead of Henry vowing to make Fanny fall in love with him, Mary vows to make Fanny think of her as her closest friend, so she spends months cultivating their relationship and acting more in line with Fanny’s beliefs, but while she’s pretending, she starts to genuinely become a better person and also feels her “friendship” cross over into something much more complicated.
* Mary, not Henry, goes to visit Fanny when she’s in Portsmouth, and is affected by what she sees there to the point of attempting to rescue Fanny from her stress and poor health by either inviting her away somewhere or by inserting herself into the life and circumstances of the Price family. How does Fanny feel about her glamorous quasi-friend seeing her family’s circumstances? Does it cause tension between them that then comes to a head with a kiss? Or does it go well, letting them slide into love less contentiously?
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Nick Fury/Tony Stark
I love their mutual skepticism about each other and how that gradually changes into something more appreciative and attached. The contrast between Tony’s history of devil-may-care attitude and Fury-as-voice-of-establishment is great, as is the complexity you get when you realize that’s not entirely true: Fury barely trusts anyone and constantly works on his own, especially once he’s off-the-grid, and Tony is really attached to the idea of the Avengers as a concept. They just have so much awesome, built-in conflict and such great loyalty kink potential. I’m also used to weird, messy comics timelines with multiple variations, so feel free to diverge from the MCU timeline/events.
* Fury recruits a pre-Iron Man Tony to work at SHIELD, either full-time or in a contracting capacity. Does he recruit Tony when they’re both much younger--college-aged genius with daddy issues unsurprisingly falls for older, mid-ranked, sexy, mildly amused recruiting officer?--or later, and how does he talk him into it? What would it be like for Tony to be working the Batman angle with his playboy image as a cover? Or does he go full-on science geek and work in SHIELD labs and tech-design? I’m with deducing backstory if you just want to jump into a snippet of shippy interaction anywhere in any of these kinds of scenarios.
* Unconventional dating! These are two people who do not have the schedules, the straightforwardness, or the normal emotional expression to make a habit out of just doing dinner and a movie. I’d love to see some romantic comedy mishaps and triumphs of the two of them trying to flirt or have a relationship in the midst of global crises, missions, and general weirdness. I’m a sucker for unconventional romantic gestures.
* Nick Fury cameos, the Sexy Edition. Fury has been popping up in Tony’s life for years, either deliberately (because he wants to keep an eye on this high-profile weapons manufacturer) or just because he is everywhere, and they keep having either flirtatious run-ins or one-night stands with no follow-up because of Tony’s playboy side and/or Fury’s enigmatic disappearing acts, until eventually the “who is this guy?” factor starts to drive Tony crazy.
* I’m not specifically into daddy kink (where the characters are aware of it and use the actual word), but I’d be totally down for seeing Fury consciously play on Tony’s father issues with some praise kink and strategic emotional withholding, both for sexy and strategy.
* The aftermath of intense missions or crises, with or without hurt/comfort (and I’d love either of them as the hurt person or the comforter, or the two of them in both roles simultaneously) where the comfort has a lot of indirect expression--either reserved or low-key, or “I upgraded your house’s security settings without telling you,” or physical touch without a lot of conversation, etc.
Nick Fury/Natasha Romanov
I am really, really into handler/spy or spymaster/spy relationships, and this is one of my all-time favorites. I love the strange moral positioning they end up with, where Natasha is looking for redemption in an agency that’s still morally compromised, and where she still accepts that she’ll have to do some covert, shady things; where Fury might love her and still have to keep sending her out into dangerous situations because she’s the best person for them even if it gets her killed. And they have all the loyalty/trust kink issues and complications, too! Natasha’s obvious pain at finding out that Fury didn’t trust her enough to include her in his fake death plans! Their shared general reserve and the way they use humor to cover for things! Cool spy adventures!
* I got a delightful fake-marriage Fury/Natasha treat last year and it made me want all possible variations on this idea. Seriously, all of them. Masquerading as a couple as part of a job? Faking a secret relationship in a moment of lightheartedness just to screw with everyone’s heads? Anything that puts them in a situation where they just have to act like they love each other until, of course, they really do.
* I’d love digging into the complications of their relationship starting after Winter Soldier: maybe they end up having to stay together while they’re lying low, and there’s a lot of tension between them because she’s angry that he didn’t trust her more? I just love adding a touch of simmering resentment and hurt to this particular cocktail. But I’m also completely happy with the two of them just sometimes traveling together as they’re trying to avoid being noticed, especially since they know that they’d technically be more low-profile staying apart.
* I would also love anything set early on in their relationship. What were their interactions like when she first started working for SHIELD? (I’m okay with UST for that one.) What about when he’s sending her out on missions? I love “handler as the voice in your ear” and hurt/comfort in the aftermath of spy assignments, especially if it gets complicated because the comforter is the person who effectively got you hurt and part of the hurt is the guilt of having done something really morally dubious.
* Similarly, I’d love to see hurt/comfort with Fury hurt from a mission or an assassination attempt and Natasha in the comforting role, possibly feeling a little awkward in it. She just assigns herself as his bodyguard and starts staking out his apartment? I really like watching people who are bad with feelings trying to negotiate having them for each other.
Nick Fury/Loki
I am all over this: there’s something about the combination of “highly pragmatic realist with big-picture-only ethics” and “chaotic trickster Shakespearean supervillain” that is just awesome. Loki has complicated feelings about people with eyepatches! They’re both prone to making deals they absolutely never plan to honor and both go off on their own at a moments notice! Obviously I like the shades of gray here--for these two, I’m especially fond of a complicated middle ground, neither fluff nor total “one of us just sold the other out permanently” darkfic.
* Flirtation through the glass wall of a prison cell, either just for kicks or as part of a quid pro quo haggling session, or, the explicit variation, flirtation through the glass wall of a prison cell that leads to kinky voyeuristic pleasure through the glass wall of a prison cell, with one or both of them delighting in a little self-action knowing that it’s having an effect on the other.
* Reluctant partnership to take down some bigger threat: anything that could plausibly have Loki hanging around Earth for a while in Fury’s company and the two of them accidentally bonding over repartee and the ability to come up with worst-case scenarios. I love inadvertent cultural and personal cross-pollination here, so things like “Fury starts occasionally sounding like Shakespeare in the Park” to “Loki starts making pissy comments about people Fury dislikes” are always fun. I’d love this for either SHIELD-era Fury or lone-wolf-HYDRA-hunting Fury, and as an official or extremely unofficial arrangement.
* Vaguely post-Ragnarok, Loki’s back on Earth and trying to not try to conquer it, and Fury is circling around the Avengers and the Asgardians trying to get a feel for the situation and, in particular, a feel for this returned and ostensibly sort of reformed Loki. Since Fury has recruited former enemies before, he’s obviously not above giving clandestine second chances to people he feels could be useful (especially if he comes to like them), and I love the idea of him starting to consider that with Loki. Tricksters would make natural spies, after all. And Fury should probably check to see whether Loki’s good enough in bed to pull off a honeypot operation…
* Early Thor AU where Loki ends up on Earth pre-major villainy, whether willingly (just for his own entertainment) or unwillingly (Odin realizes Loki tipped off the Frost Giants and temporarily banishes him, not Thor), and runs into Fury. I like the idea of the two of them having the character flaws to work through but not necessarily the same history, and also just of Fury getting kind of a kick out of interacting with (and eventually bedding) his first alien. I’d also love to see Fury on Asgard during this period for some reason, and the two of them hitting it off--easily or more combatively--there.
* Kink: tying up/gagging/collaring Loki, silver-tongued dirty talk, marking/bruising/biting, voyeurism, orgasm delay/denial.
Hela/Valkyrie
This would be so sizzlingly hot, and it has so much potential for darkness and tragedy. I love the sense of history between the two of them, as the only two characters we see who definitely lived through Asgard’s establishing of its empire, who probably fought together and then eventually fought against each other. I love Valkyrie’s bitterness and survivor’s guilt and Hela’s combination of dominance and insecurity. They’re just such a rich ship.
* Anything set before Asgard’s reformation. What was the relationship between the Valkyries and Odin’s heir and executioner? Sisters-in-arms with mutual respect and wartime hookups in the midst of world-conquering? I love frantic we’re-alive sex and people falling together while covered in mud or blood or, in this case, weird magical after-effects that might make you especially aroused. Or since the Valkyries were sworn to the throne of Asgard, was Brunnhilde ever basically Hela’s bodyguard? Was there pining?
* Val was a soldier, and she never says anything one way or the other on how she felt about Asgard limiting its wars, so what if it had rankled her too and she had joined up with Hela and they’d been banished together? Or fought together and won, even? I’d totally take the two of them ruling Asgard as warrior queens and trying to conquer the universe, complete with all the dubious morality of that: do they plan to rule what they’ve conquered, strip out resources, or just indiscriminately slaughter everyone?
* A bent-timeline encounter between the two of them before the climactic battle--two enemies who know they’re about to try to kill each other and having a quick fumble with weird, ambiguous feelings? Hela tries to recruit Val to her side of things and adds sex as an incentive?
* What if Hela had been the one to get pushed from the Bifrost and she had landed in Sakaar, soon to come face-to-face with the Grandmaster’s favorite scavenger? That far from Asgard, are Hela’s powers weak enough that she could be contained, but not quite weak enough for her to be easily defeated? I’d love to see the two of them squaring off, neither able to defeat the other, and so eventually finding some other way to relieve all that tension and aggression. Gladiatorial combat followed by sex, or gladiatorial sex in the arena, or whatever you like.
Bruce Banner & Loki
Bruce Banner/Loki
I adore this one as either enemies-to-lovers or enemies-to-friends or enemies-to-uneasy-allies (sexy or platonic). I just really love that Loki was on the same planet as the Hulk for weeks without noticing and then his immediate response is to finding that out is to scheme to get as far away as possible; I love Bruce asking him if he’s still trying to kill everyone. Since I’m so fresh off Thor: Ragnarok, my prompts all go in that direction, but feel absolutely free to set this whenever you like. I’m also totally okay with any Hulking out.
* Loki lands on Sakaar and ends up in the arena, where he’s supposed to use magic for showy fights; he’s beyond terrified to run into the Hulk in the ring or out of it. Are their matches interesting enough for Loki to end up in the penthouse too? Can he use magic to calm the Hulk down into being Bruce again--either eventually or right away? And what’s Bruce’s reaction to realizing who he’s stranded with?
* Post-Ragnarok, Bruce eventually comes back to himself, but it’s still a long journey to Earth and he’s stuck as the only human on a ship full of alien refugees. I love the idea of him awkwardly bonding more with Loki just because Loki is one of the few people there he knows--and one who has an active interest in not making him angry--and maybe taking a suspicious interest in Loki’s attempt at reinventing himself. Does he relate at all? (He is, presumably, fresh off years of killing enslaved gladiators--he has to have his own very recent residual guilt.) Do they end up collaborating on Asgardian civil projects together and find they actually kind of get along?
* Rough, antagonistic sex? Awkward, surprisingly nice sex? Does Bruce like restraints as a metaphorical thing even if he knows they won’t actually stop the Hulk? How much can they get themselves to trust each other in bed?
* I love characters who have a relationship where the only gestures of affection they’re ever likely to make would be weird and specific to their relationship, whether those gestures are romantic or indications of friendship, and these two definitely qualify. A Hulk-out where the Hulk has actually gotten kind of fond of Loki? Bruce trying to teach Loki literally any strategy of dealing with anger or resentment? Loki giving Bruce a peek behind the magic-is-science curtain?
Loki & Valkyrie & Sif & Thor & Heimdall
I love alien cultures, alien values, and cultures in flight clinging to whatever they have left: the ship full of Asgardians out looking for a new home is perfect fic fodder for me. I would love any variation on these five hanging out in space, on Earth, or on some other planet, trying to deal with what to hold on and what they’ll have to let go of, trying to govern, trying to deal with their collective trauma, or just trying to adjust in general. I like the spread of characters here too: Loki, the one nobody entirely trusts; Valkyrie, the one nobody entirely knows, and the one who remembers an Asgard they never saw; Sif, who’s been out of the loop; Thor, who’s making a hard transition from rakish wandering prince and superhero to actual king; and Heimdall, who is a stable point in a no longer stable society. There’s just so much potential there.
* Asgardian culture on the brink of destruction. I’d love to see the five of them attempting to fulfill or preserve some kind of ceremony or ritual, maybe without having all the resources for it, or to see them attempting to fill roles that they weren’t entirely prepared for (Thor as king, Sif as a new Valkyrie, Loki as advisor) and maybe don’t want (how does Val feel about being pulled back into all this?).
* Odin said Hela’s powers, like Thor’s, were tied to Asgard, so now that Asgard has been destroyed, what does that mean? Is Thor going to find his powers fading, and if so, does he tell his inner council that or try to conceal it? Is Loki losing his magic, or is that different because of his Jotun heritage? If it’s different, is there more conflict or mistrust that would come from Loki keeping his magic while Thor’s diminished? Would Heimdall still be able to see everything without the Bifrost or Asgard? Just anything with a character’s loss hitting them physically as well, and everyone else having to deal with that.
* Court and/or council business, on the spaceship or elsewhere. They have a lot of decisions to make and a lot of conflicts to settle, so how do they go about it? What if they didn’t immediately choose Earth as a destination and had to spend some time deciding where to go? I’d happily read about anything from them dealing with supply problems to criminal justice to “what kind of history of Asgard are we supposed to preserve?”
* Melancholy hangouts where they discuss what they have left of home or where they reminisce together. Are they able to all find enough common ground there, or do tensions arise even in mourning their shared loss? I like all kinds of fights--physical, vicious interpersonal, etc.--and I like them even more when everyone still has to keep living together and working together after them, so it’s all kind of awkward.
Original Work
Female Bodyguard/Female Musician
I have a soft spot for f/f butch bodyguard/femme singer with high mutual physical appreciation, in particular, but any variation on this is still excellent. I really love the potential for these two to dislike or not understand each other at first and to have a little bit of a bumpy working relationship until they realize each other’s competence. I like all variations on musician for this--highly-managed pop star, indie sensation, folk artist, classical violinist--so feel free to take this in whatever direction you like.
* Why does the singer need a bodyguard? Has her life actually been threatened, or is she just at the level of stardom where they become fairly mandatory? Is she scared, resentful, blithely confident nothing will happen? And what does the bodyguard think of the job? Did she want it because she liked the singer’s work or is it just another way to pay the rent? Is she running the risk of not taking the job seriously until something happens?
* The bodyguard gets hurt protecting the musician and awesome hurt/comfort ensues, possibly followed by thank-God-we’re-alive sex? Does the musician have a stalker who picks up on the changed vibes between the bodyguard and the musician after they get together and who then gets determined to take their competition out of the picture? Do they end up in a situation where they both have to fight/think their way out of danger?
* The musician starts writing a song for her bodyguard, with or without the bodyguard knowing it. Is it how she declares Feelings? When does the bodyguard realize that she’s the subject of the song?
* Mutual admiration: sparring, target practice, “let me teach you how to shoot which requires me to put my arms around you and move your legs to correct your stance,” listening to a concert from backstage, being appreciative of high-life glamor, being appreciative of muscles. Friction from the musician being the employer at the same time as the bodyguard is more physically capable, from the stress of being in danger, from possible class issues.
* Smut welcome. I’d love anything in my likes and body appreciation, holding someone up against a wall, bruises/marking, rough sex, and emotional sex are ones that seem extra-appropriate to me for this pairing. But seriously, anything.
Female Confidential Informant/Her Female Handler
Female Petty Criminal/Female Cop
I’m putting both of these together because my prompts are flexible enough to cover both, and because I could easily see them being the same pairing: the petty criminal becomes an informant and the cop is her handler. But this set-up is one of my favorites, so truly, I’d love any variation on either of these. I like opposite-sides-of-the-law pairings and morally gray characters--handlers who might be endangering their informants, cops who might be on the take--and I like the worry, anger, fear, and disappointment that comes up in a relationship where one half is perpetually hoping the other half will get their life in order.
* Off that last bit, does the cop or handler want her criminal informant to get her life together? Is she trying to help? If she’s the handler, or if she otherwise sometimes uses the criminal for information, does she have to deal with some mixed feelings about how this will mean losing a point of access? I’m all for moral dilemmas and the opportunity to make terrible decisions, whether that’s intentionally pushing a vulnerable person back to crime or potentially scuppering a huge investigation because you want to save your girlfriend.
* How did the two of them meet? Did the criminal make the first move, approaching the cop or handler in hopes of making money or getting some kind of justice? Did the cop or handler recruit or befriend them, and if so, what drew them to each other? Was it careful--a literal or metaphorical seduction--or a spontaneous befriending that became something more?
* True love means you help bury the body, right? I’d love to see the more legally-minded half of the relationship getting drawn into crimes or their cover-ups, whether those are relatively harmless or justified or much darker. How do they feel about covering things up or making problems go away? Do the criminals feel like they owe them something for this?
* Wiretap voyeurism, handcuffs, D/s, rough sex, surprisingly tender sex, implicit sexual bargaining, complicated feelings of debt and responsibility and manipulation and taking advantage.
Female Cop Undercover in a BDSM Club/Female Werewolf
This has to be one of the best pairing ideas of all time. I love undercover tropes and “undercover in a BDSM club” tropes and I love werewolves; this is definitely a match made in my id. Bring it on and throw every cliche at me you like. Leather jackets. People discovering or admitting sexual desires they’d never known about/explored before. “Due to the labyrinthine requirements of this club, we have to do a scene together because Reasons.” Werewolves pack-bonding with humans; werewolves turning humans into werewolves accidentally or consensually.
Pairing specific DNW: sex in wolf form.
* Does the cop suspect the werewolf of a crime? (Or of being a werewolf, depending on whether or not werewolves are a known phenomenon?) Does she intend to use some kind of club interaction to find out? Does the werewolf sense that she’s a cop--from her smell or from her demeanor? Are they both trying to manipulate each other, or do they come together by chance and the cop doesn’t find out she’s ended up with a werewolf until it suddenly gets revealed?
* The werewolf is in the BDSM club partly because she doesn’t have a pack and it’s reassuring to be around more structured roles: she’s all too happy to claim the undercover cop as her alpha or to take on the role of alpha to her, and the cop has no clue what she’s getting into and that she’s signing up for a more permanent connection, complete with a pack-bond. Does the werewolf turn the cop? Does she want to? Does the cop want her to? What happens if they have sex and then form some kind of closeness-required connection accidentally?
* Whatever the cop is there for, she didn’t expect to stumble across a wolf killing someone who had crossed the line into serious, unasked-for injury or rape, but now she’s been saddled with a dead body, a werewolf, and a lot of unrelieved sexual tension, and the werewolf has to decide whether or not to let this witness go. Maybe she can be convinced not to talk.
* The cop is allowed a lot of leeway on what she does undercover as long as no actual sex is had, so she and the werewolf can do all kinds of things as long as neither one of them has an orgasm, which is fine by the werewolf, because she has very good reasons to not want to lose control. Does one of them break, or do they have tons of orgasm-denial kink?
Female Werewolf Pack Leader/Female Werewolf Pack Member
Werewolves are my favorite stripe of urban fantasy, and I love werewolf worldbuilding, whatever kind of werewolves you choose to go with or invent. I love pack-bonds and people acting off animal instincts while in human form, I love possessiveness and the need to be close, I love heightened senses of smell, I love loyalty kink. Note for this pairing: I’m totally fine with wolf-form sex being mentioned/alluded to, but I’d prefer no explicit depictions of it. Human-on-human sex with animalistic behavior is 100% okay.
* How did the pack form, and how did the pack member join up? Were they attracted to each other from the start and have sex right away, or did it build up slowly? Did they have sex in wolf form but shrug it off because everybody has sex in wolf form? What was the bonding process between the two of them? Biting, nuzzling, marking, claiming? Is the pack member a new enough werewolf that she’s worried she’s the only one who thought that was erotic and that the pack leader just thinks it’s wolves being wolves?
* Did the pack leader turn the pack member? If so, why? Were they already together and making a deliberate choice? Did the pack leader need to turn her to control or help her in some way (make it less likely that she’d publicly reveal the existence of werewolves, heal her, give her super-strength to get the both of them out of some bad situation)?
* I love highly organized societies, including societies with biological drives and/or imperatives, so what separates the werewolves from humans as far as their instincts and traditions go? Is it common to arrange marriages outside of the pack to keep the bloodlines fresh, and the pack leader feels horribly conflicted about wanting to mate within her own pack? What makes them turn into wolves, and how could it tie into their relationship? What kind of loyalty automatically exists between the two of them, and what kind is by choice?
Vice Principals
Neal Gamby/Lee Russell
These two are such a mess--but they’re a trainwreck with heart, despite all the tragedy and chaos they bring about. I loved watching their connection grow into something genuine, and I love how the awfulness that brought them together lets them have complete honesty with each other about all of their worst impulses, and that that can be good as well as bad. I love their pettiness and terrible plans. I love Lee’s attempted Machiavellian schemes and Neal’s straightforwardness. I love their weird journeys to being better people.
* I get so much joy from Lee Russell’s wardrobe and would love anything that gave him and Gamby the clothes-shopping montage Gamby and Abbott got in season two. Lee decides Neal seriously needs a makeover, and takes him to the mall? It’s post-canon and he decides to test out his retail skills by doing a complete fitting? Does someone get a blowjob in a fitting room? Does Neal clue into a crush because he realizes he really likes Lee’s “fancy pants” clothes, and how Lee looks in them?
* Post-canon, the two of them end up in a different, less terrible scheme, maybe to get revenge on Lee’s sisters or defuse some particularly awful helicopter parent. I’d love to see them getting up to all kinds of criminal hijinks while still being the lesser of two evils, especially if it feels like a midlife crisis rehash to them and Lee keeps complaining that it’s weak bullshit.
* Canon-divergence AU where Gamby did take the job Brown offered him near the end of season one, and Russell quit and hooked up with him as a catty faculty husband? AU where Neal got the job at the beginning of season one but they fall in love through a haze of resentment and weird occurrences and Russell eventually admits that okay, yes, he burned Neal’s house down, but it was such a long time ago and he thinks Neal shouldn’t still be hung up on it?
* Russell gets shot in the head and becomes a better person! I love the idea of those two things being correlated in a not-at-all realistic way, so I would totally take a Lee post-shooting who is a lot calmer and more affable, and a lot more affectionate, to the point where Neal finds it unnerving. Also post-shooting--either shooting! or the tiger mauling!--hurt/comfort with sarcastic banter and feel-better sex.
* Rarely have I felt so deprived of anything as I did by the two of them never canonically having sex on that mattress in the woods. I would go for that in combination with any of these prompt or just on its own. Ditto spanking with the GET IT paddle.
You’re the Worst
Gretchen/Lindsay
My most beloved style of romance is “assholes in love.” You’re the Worst provides a wonderful canon version with Gretchen/Jimmy, and I would love to see fic fulfill my deep-seated desire for Gretchen/Lindsay. I love their petty awfulness and garbage-monster behavior, from the abuse of a froyo sample policy to an attempted turkey-baster baby-trap. They have the potential for great dramatic tension, with Gretchen trying at least a little to grow and change and Lindsay mostly being content to wallow (until they veer towards switching roles), and they also have a great, long history, with both withering sarcasm and genuine warmth and affection.
* College days! Lindsay specifically mentions watching Gretchen deal with her depression back then, and it would be interesting and even touching to see how she first clued in and then tried to help. (Knowing Lindsay, probably with a combination of drugs and attempted magical healing sex.)
* What if Gretchen, feeling down after Becca’s wedding in the pilot, had gone home with Lindsay instead of Jimmy? (Lindsay can just… not be married to Paul, if you like, or else, in true You’re the Worst fashion, their divorce can be hastily ensured by Lindsay bringing Gretchen home for a boozy and torrid one-night stand with her husband literally right there.) Would they be able to connect romantically too? They both have mutual terribleness and shared fluctuating levels of conscience and regret. What would one of the show’s storylines look like filtered through them instead of Gretchen/Jimmy?
* An AU where Lindsay is one of Gretchen’s publicity clients, maybe a spoiled and ditzy former backup singer now trying to make it on her own? I have a weak spot for really tropey romance novel plots like this one, so free to take that admission to rewrite the most Harlequin of Harlequin scenarios, whatever you can think of, and I’ll probably eat it up with a spoon. Rich-Lindsay and personal assistant-Gretchen? Both of them as sugar baby hangers-on to rich guys who find themselves more and more interested in each other?
* Any kind of post-season three get-together fic, when they're both single and living together in a tiny apartment. What sets off a change in their relationship? Does Gretchen start to think of Lindsay in a different light when she sees her at work, competent for once? Does a fight over their mutual frustrations lead to one of them jumping the other's bones? I can just see Gretchen impulsively sleeping with Lindsay to get out of a conversation about why she's still not leaving the apartment, or seeing her as a slightly healthier alternative to doing some more crack. Basically, just all the simmering tension exploding into hot sex and feelings.
* Any of the above, with porn, or just porn, ideally with feelings mixed in. Oral? Strap-ons? Wild, wacky, and sometimes wildly successful experimentation with different positions and toys? Costumes? Dirty talk? Public sex? (Hooking up in season two's haunted house?) Anal? Some casual BDSM?