Due South & C6D AU Play Day!
Aug. 23rd, 2013 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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alternate_ds_c6dWELCOME to our DS-C6D Alternate Universe Play Day! To play, simply grab one or more of the 86 prompts from the initial brainstorming list and do something with it! This is open to everyone, no minimums, no betas needed, no pressure -- just PLAY!
ANY type of fanwork is welcome as long as you somehow convey that there's an alternate universe involved. Sample work types include but aren't limited to: fic, art, vids, podfic, manips, mixed media, yarncraft, six word stories, limericks, thumbnail doodles, paperclip sculptures, mashed potato sculptures, one-sentence-fic, etc.
You can play as many times as you want. You can use as many prompts (as many times) as you want. Please put different AUs into different comments (eta: Unless you're doing something like one-sentence-fic of a zillion separate prompts. Use your best judgment!)
When you're ready, put your work in a comment to this post using the following format:
Make sure your work is going in a reply to this post instead of a reply to someone else's comment!
Please remember to give feedback to people when you enjoy their works!
Okay! Are you ready? This post will be open for roughly 24 hours, so grab an Alternate Universe (or several) and PLAY! \o/
ANY type of fanwork is welcome as long as you somehow convey that there's an alternate universe involved. Sample work types include but aren't limited to: fic, art, vids, podfic, manips, mixed media, yarncraft, six word stories, limericks, thumbnail doodles, paperclip sculptures, mashed potato sculptures, one-sentence-fic, etc.
You can play as many times as you want. You can use as many prompts (as many times) as you want. Please put different AUs into different comments (eta: Unless you're doing something like one-sentence-fic of a zillion separate prompts. Use your best judgment!)
When you're ready, put your work in a comment to this post using the following format:
In the subject line: Fandom; AU; Rating; Relationships
For example: Due South; Animal transformation AU; Mature; FKV
If your work has triggery content, put a brief content warning/advisory in the first line of your comment, right at the top. If you want to choose not to warn, put "Author chooses not to warn". If there's nothing to warn for, skip this.
Make sure your work is going in a reply to this post instead of a reply to someone else's comment!
Please remember to give feedback to people when you enjoy their works!
Okay! Are you ready? This post will be open for roughly 24 hours, so grab an Alternate Universe (or several) and PLAY! \o/
Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-23 05:18 pm (UTC)Author Notes: So, I was writing this shortish AU story that I thought I might submit to the challenge if I had time. Then I went to one of the chat sessions and everyone gave me a million ideas about the giant monster epic version I hadn't been planning to write... So now this story's back on the write-someday-when-I-have-time shelf. But I thought I'd offer the first couple of scenes (un-beta'ed, un-edited) for Play Day.
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Fic Teaser #1: Ellen died and became a ghost, rather than Oliver.
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Ellen should have got someone to give her a ride home, or really, called a cab, because yes, it’s a nice night out, but it’s also two in the morning and the walk to her house is damned long at that hour, in these shoes. Especially when she’s a little drunk. Okay, maybe more than a little.
Her footsteps echo in the quiet night, staccato, uneven. Once, she catches her heel in a crack on the sidewalk and just barely keeps herself from sprawling face-first into the gutter. Wouldn’t the newspapers just love that? New Burbage Diva Sinks To New Lows. Basil would have a field day: he has the soul of a gossip-columnist anyway.
Across the deserted street, movement catches her eye. Just some poor bastard in the phonebooth, probably trying to get a cab, and Ellen really ought to follow his example. As she crosses over, she sees it’s Oliver on the phone. She can tell from the way he’s swaying that he’s a lot more smashed than she is, so it’s good that he has the sense not to drive. She doesn’t feel up to Oliver tonight, and is about to turn and keep on going, look for another phone booth, except damn it, even through the dirty glass she can tell he doesn’t look all right. And Ellen has no sense of responsibility and she doesn’t even like Oliver, but she goes over and taps on the glass anyway.
Oliver’s head whips around and he stares at her with an absolutely hunted, haunted expression, the phone receiver dangling from his hand.
“Go away,” he commands as she pries the door open.
“You’re drunk,” she tells him. “Let me get you home to bed. We’ll split a cab.”
“Harpy. You ruined him. You ruined me.” He waves the receiver at her.
Ellen has no idea what Oliver’s talking about, but she does. There’s only one him for the two of them. Still. Eternally.
She’s not dealing with this at this hour of the night. Or, preferably, ever.
“Come on.” She grabs Oliver by the elbow and tugs him out of the phone booth. The receiver swings, knocking against the wall. She can hear the faint drone of the dial tone.
“Couldn’t you just leave us alone for once?” Oliver is sloppy and pathetic, his suit rumpled, his face wet with sweat and God knows what else, but his slurred voice is thick with despair. He’s as much of a diva as Ellen is, always has been, but even though this is bullshit, she can’t help feeling sorry for him.
“Shut up,” she tells him. “We’re going home.”
Oliver shoves her hard, the force sending them both reeling in opposite directions. Ellen’s heel catches on the curb and she goes down hard, cracking her head on the pavement.
. . .new lows. . . Stars dance across her vision, a squeal like a thousand pigs being slaughtered rips the air, and then she’s engulfed in blinding white light and a roar like the ocean sucking her under.
* * *
The phone is ringing.
Ellen turns to answer it and discovers that she’s in an unfamiliar apartment. The place is cheap and run-down to begin with, and is not improved by the wreckage of what must have been a pretty damn good party. She’s standing at the foot of a sofa, which contains—or fails to contain—a presumably-unconscious body half-buried under a ratty afghan.
Ellen looks around for the phone, which is still ringing, and finally locates it on a bookshelf above the sofa. It’s held together with duct tape. Another casualty of the festivities, maybe.
She thinks about answering the damn thing, but it’s not her phone, she doesn’t even know these people. Or what she’s doing in their apartment, for that matter. Presumably someone in the Young Company lives here and Ellen decided to slum it with the youngsters. She must have had either a good time or a bad one, since apparently it involved drinking so much she doesn’t even remember how she got here.
The phone keeps ringing.
There’s a groan from the sofa. The blanket-wrapped lump tumbles to the floor with a heavy thud and a louder groan.
His voice is permanently written in her blood. So the rat’s-nest of dark curls that emerges out of the blanket isn’t a surprise. The broad shoulders covered by a worn t-shirt, the big, expressive hand that fumbles the phone off its cradle while the other hand scrubs over the face that Ellen absolutely hasn’t dreamed about, not once in the last seven years.
“What?” says Geoffrey into the phone, and suddenly Ellen is seized with terror.
Put it down. Hang up. Don’t, she thinks, but she doesn’t speak, doesn't lunge forward to snatch it from his hand. She just stands there watching his back as he stands there silently listening to the voice on the other end announcing the end of the world as he knows it.
The receiver falls, pulling the whole phone off the shelf with it to smash on the floor. Geoffrey stands motionless like a waxwork waiting to be turned on.
She thought she knew what he looked like, broken, but apparently she was wrong. Even then, after Hamlet, even the one time she looked in on him in the hospital and found him drugged to the eyeballs, he was a Catherine Wheel of emotions, words pouring out of him, body never still. This is far more terrifying.
“Geoffrey.”
The word drops him to his knees. He buries his face in his hands with a high, sharp keening sound.
She kneels beside him. Puts her hands on his shoulders. She can feel him, sort of: his substance and solidity, but not the heat of his body. He was always too warm, she was always too cold. Very convenient for her, when they shared a bed. They used to joke he was her hot water bottle. Not anymore.
He’s shivering violently.
“It’s all right,” she tells him. But he’s shaking his head and muttering, one word over and over like a metronome: “No no no no no….”
“All right,” she says, right on the edge between laughter and tears. “It’s not all right. It’s not fucking all right at all.”
His head comes up. He stares straight into her face. One beautiful, shaking hand touches her cheek, contact but no heat.
“You’re right,” he says softly. “This is not fucking all right at all.”
And he starts to laugh, jaggedly, helplessly.
Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-23 05:49 pm (UTC)passes tissues and an antipasto platter.
Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-24 02:36 am (UTC)Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-23 05:54 pm (UTC)OH, my heart. THEMMMMMM!!!!! <333
This is gorgeous and I am not coherent about it at ALL. *loves*
Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-24 02:37 am (UTC)(I blame you for the hypothetical monster this fic has turned into. But only in the nicest possible way. :) )
Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-28 03:35 am (UTC)Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-24 06:43 pm (UTC)Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-24 07:02 pm (UTC)(Doing Oliver's gonna be harder than doing Geoffrey & Ellen, I think.)
Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-28 03:46 am (UTC)Re: Slings & Arrows; Ghost!Ellen; Teen; Ellen/Geoffrey
Date: 2013-08-28 12:33 pm (UTC)