I&#39;ve got it under control!

"Marwood?"

The feeble call came from next door, from the room that Carstairs commandeered and would insist upon calling his 'study'. I heaved myself out of the somewhat decrepit armchair and then paused for a moment, that the room might settle into place around me, brass fittings dancing sickeningly in the flickering light. This case of influenza, brought to the house under a waistcoat that matched the colour of the gentleman's florid cheeks, was proving nearly as persistent as my friend.

"Charles?"

My name trailed off into a truly pitiful bout of coughing, and I made my slow and unsteady way to the brass handled door. Naturally, as ill as I might have become, Carstairs had allowed himself to descend far further, far more interested in experimenting with the elasticity of his sputum than such trifling concerns as regaining his health.

The opened door revealed a quite pathetic sight. Carstairs had apparently tired of remaining vertical, as was the fashion, and was spreadeagled on the floor like a crushed cricket. He lay among the dust and detritus of a hundred failed experiments wearing my best dressing gown; he looked miserable enough that I was unable to berate him for it. (It is far better saved for when he is in perfect health and annoying me with his cheer, besides.)

"I should like to be pickled," he said decisively if a little unintelligibly, for his nose was quite thoroughly stuffed. "Pickled like one of your corpses, with all of my fluids in a jar on the floor." He batted idly at a particularly large dust mote - for Mrs Winters had refused to come near the place in months - that was spiraling down from the ceiling. "You might need a particularly large collecting jar for my nose, however, and one almost so large for my brain, like..." he dissolved into a coughing fit again, and I sighed and set about forcing him to sit up.

"Like the Egyptians?" I asked, over his harsh barking, and at his nod continued. "I protest the cost of building you a pyramid, so you shall have to make do with life for the moment."

My hand was rubbing briskly across his back, more to remove the dust than as comfort, though I allowed him to interpret as he would for the moment. Carstairs leant unhelpfully against me, his head coming to rest on my shoulder; the skin of his cheek was like a furnace against my neck.

"Will you consent to go to bed now, you simpleton?" I asked, gentler than my words would suggest; one fever-bright eye squinted up at me with ill-disguised cunning.

"Is that a proposition, Charles?"

I allowed him a smile, at that.

"If you like," I answered, our quarantine allowing this indulgence; I enjoyed his incredulous smile.

Edited Date: 2010-01-19 08:41 pm (UTC)

From:

apiphile.livejournal.com

You are without a doubt a genius, and were I wealthy I would pay to have you locked in a box to write me an entire novel about them. :)

From:

There should be a meme where you can give your favourite couples the flu! And it would be cute, but it would not be as awesome as this because Marwood is love and Carstairs being a crazy (and flu-ridden) scientist is even more love and OMG I WANT TO BUY THE BOOK OF THEM. I'M JUST SAYING.

From:

dramaturgca.livejournal.com

McGee/Abby

From:

So Abby doesn't really get the people who don't see it coming. She always sees it coming because with everyone it is, potentially at least. See, pretty much the only thing she can't find attractive is boredom; she doesn't really understand how you could have a whole world to play with and not find something that PBs your jelly.

And McGee's kind of like her in that the whole world's his PB. Okay, maybe not the stuff that other people find cool, and watching Tony despair of him is always kind of funny, but that's cool too because it means he's come to it on his own terms. Everything he loves he loves openly and wholeheartedly, his face lighting up into the most childlike of smiles.

It's been a while since those smiles started connecting directly to the bats that flutter in her stomach.

So mostly she's been waiting, and watching it approach - nothing ever snuck up on this forensic scientist. Save ex-boyfriends, and rogue lab-techs, and that fake agent guy, and that time with the Phantom -

Whatever. Abby's been watching it coming, is the point. And she's been waiting, too, because the thing is she wants to be loved the way that Timmy loves. Open, and wholehearted, and like the whole world of peanut butter rests on her smile, and possibly that analogy got away from her, somewhere in the middle there. She's just waiting for that one time when she throws her arms around his neck and feels the faintest hitch in his breath against her skin.

Edited Date: 2010-01-19 09:04 pm (UTC)

From:

dramaturgca.livejournal.com

I love you.

From:

You have a fucking stellar Abby voice. PBS YOUR JELLY. omg. And yesyesyesyes.

*loves Abby and Timmy, so much so much*

From:

I think it is my favourite non-marstairs one I've writ in LONG and LONG. Abby makes a nice mental place.

From:

Well, if it's going to go down like that, I might have to get behind it. :D

From:

sabinetzin

Oh, oh! Tony/Tim!

From:

It's... actually kind of bland, when it happens? Tim had expected something -

Now, Tony's very suave with all the women, so long as it doesn't come down to emotions. His dates are generally perfectly planned, and his gifts are predictable but thoughtful; sure, he put the thought in once, several years ago, and has kind of stuck with the same formula since, but that's not the point.

Tim had kind of been... expecting wasn't actually the word. Hoping, maybe. Tim'd been hoping for something a bit clumsier, hotter, infinitely more inept. He'd been expecting something furtive and poorly communicated and most likely agonised over any time they were in public.

Instead Tony made sure Tim knew it was a date when he asked him. Took him to a nice restaurant where the Maitre d' smiled at them indulgently and sat them somewhere that anyone could just look and see. Poured his wine and started a polite conversation (which quickly devolved into mocking and laughing, on both sides - suave or not, he was still Tony), resisted the urge to order for him, brushed his fingers against the back of Tim's hand and smiled in a way that hid just about nothing at all.

It was just - it confused Tim. Threw him off. He found himself tensed against the way all of Tony's relationships ended, and he didn't understand how it still hadn't happened yet.

"I just," he confessed to the darkness of the dark room Abby'd locked them in, "I thought you were maybe looking for something different, with me."

Tony's fingers ghosted blindly over his cheek, barely avoided sticking straight in his eye, and Tim was weirdly reassured by how romantic that was not.

"Thing is I was always looking, McDubious. The only difference with you was I found."

From:

sabinetzin

Awww, boys! <3<3<3

From:

♥ booooooys

From:

torakowalski.livejournal.com

♥♥♥

From:

"Thing is I was always looking, McDubious. The only difference with you was I found."

Awwwwwwwww!!

From:

EEEEEEEEE!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! That is just so adorable and so freaking THEM and of COURSE Tim has concerns and OH! Tony has found. <3

From:

*points to icon*

(And YAY CARSTAIRS/MARWOOD YAY)

From:

Tim's fingers actually twitch when he's asleep. It's like dogs chasing phantom balls (heh) only MIT educated, the tiniest of frown lines bisecting his forehead even in his dreams. He snores, too, just a little bit. It's not even really a snore, more a miniature explosion on the exhale; when his hair is unflatteringly long (when it's not unflatteringly short, Tony'd despair only he's maybe got a handle on it lately) his invisible ordnance is just about powerful enough to stir the strands on every breath. It's kind of like a cartoon.

He sleeps in the dorkiest of shirts; one or two of them are from webcomics, and if that's not bad enough... pull away the Armani and the Porsche and even the NCIS cap and you're left with a guy who sleeps in threadbare shorts that're probably older than some of the girls Tony used to date. Something all those women writing fan letters couldn't understand: all the Thom E. Gemcity stuff stops when you get past the surface, leaving just Tim, and Tim's not cool at all. With his pasty skin, and the freckles that wage warfare on his shoulders, and the remnants of stubborn puppy fat hiding out under his chin. It's something they'll never see - not unless they look at the youtube account Tony keeps purely to torture Tim with.

He watches Tim sleep for blackmail purposes.

Well. Mostly.

From:

This is just adorable. *dawwwwwwwwwws at them*

Tony is also incredibly right about the mystery of Tim's hair, and I want to see his youtube account, because I suspect it would show that he watched the CSI Miami compendium like a hundred times and still found it hilarious. :)

From:

Oh Tony, you're so in love.

From:

D'awwwwwwwwwww, Tony's got it so bad.

From:

rowanberries.livejournal.com

OH OH OH

Arthur/Merlin, possibly taking over from the Supernatural boys?

From:

"You drove her."

Arthur's voice is flat, and Merlin backs away from the expression on his face.

"Look, I didn't - it was that or let you get captured by the weird - troll thing, and I didn't think - "

"No, clearly you didn't." Arthur turns away, his eyes scanning the red aston martin for bumps or scratches or fingerprints, probably.

"I'm fine, by the way," Merlin grumbles at Arthur's back as he fishes troll slime out of his ear. "No lasting injuries or - "

Arthur spins back around, face murderous, and Merlin suddenly remembers that he hadn't got around to replacing the John Farnham CD; that it's probably lying incriminatingly on the passenger seat.

"Er," he says helplessly. He's glad, suddenly, that Excalibur is still in its holster in the glove compartment.

From:

rowanberries.livejournal.com

:O!!!!!

There are not enough words for how much I love this!

(Arthur is TOTALLY Dean.)

Thank yoooou! <3

From:

rheanna27.livejournal.com

Good Omens, Crowley and Aziraphale.

From:

Aziraphale is a bit like timpani.

It's rather a rundown venue, but the wine is surprisingly nice - it had been surprised, too; it's most certainly not what anyone else is drinking, any more - and that's what Crowley attributes the thought to.

It makes sense, though. In a tiny venue, two pianos and a choir doing Carmina Burana, like the frankly mediocre production in a university that the angel'd dragged him off to the week before; in that situation you can't quite believe the timpani exists. It's overblown and ridiculous and faintly embarrassing, and you wouldn't want to be seen with it in public. As it were. A normal lifetime couldn't make sense of the angel, is Crowley's opinion. You wouldn't have the time for it.

Diluted, though? Over years uncountable - or, if you're going for the extended metaphor, seats innumerable - the timpani (the angel) makes sense. Becomes an asset, becomes intrinsic, becomes something that brings completeness to the arrangement.

Crowley glances to the left, to the angel shamelessly conducting the Beethoven and putting his wine glass in desperate peril, and can't help but laugh, just a little. He hadn't been a fan of the timpani for the longest time... but you get to a point where you can't imagine the music without it.

From:

rheanna27.livejournal.com

Awww, yeah. I read GO and loved the book years and years ago, and Aziraphale and Crowley were my favourite part of the whole thing. (I still have my original paperback copy on my shelf, battered now but still holding together). This is just perfect (and I love the *wine* being surprised at being drunk. Hee!)

From:

My paperback copy is battered and threadbare and signed by Neil Gaiman, and recently I accidentally came across a first edition in a charity shop. I know it's not old, or valuable, but it is one of my favourite of all books, so I was more than a little chuffed. :D

From:

minkhollow

Ziva/Abby, perhaps? (Tony/McGee is also acceptable.)

From:

Abby didn't look away from the mass spectrometer, her fingers moving restlessly and uselessly as she examined the readout again.

"...and mostly - along with the stomach twitches when you get hurt, and the shirt you lent me, which I will totally give back to you I promise, because it's stopped smelling like - anyway, mostly it's the way I keep getting a little distracted when you stand so close," she finished helplessly. "Do you have any idea how good your hair smells?"

"It has not come up in a long time," Ziva said, her smile clear in the way it shaped her voice. "I cannot promise not to distract you, Abby."

Abby sucked in a breath as Ziva's arms slipped around her waist from behind.

"Do you feel better," and that was Ziva's breath, on her ear, "now that you have got that off your breast?"

"Chest," Abby corrected, voice a little hoarse.

"I am sorry," Ziva murmured. "You are not the only one distracted."

From:

minkhollow

heeeeeeeeeeeeee ZIVA.

From:

dramaturgca.livejournal.com

This. This is... I love this. It's so ZIVA.

From:

*flaps incoherently* SO CUTE!

From:

Tony/Tim! I iz original. Or Tony/Tim/Abby.

From:

Abby's breasts press against his back and the hard length inside him shifts, forcing a groan out of him, as she leans over his shoulder to kiss Tony. Tim, in turn, can't help but push deeper, and the kiss breaks as Tony's head arches back, involuntary movement, involuntary noise.

"No fair, Timmy!" Abby's petulant, voice aggravatingly steady. "You had your turn."

"Still - having," Tony pants, and lets out another of those incredible noises as Tim lowers his weight onto him, shifting inside him again.

"Pretend you're a vampire," he advises breathlessly, and grunts as Abby nips the back of his neck.

"You have the best ideas," she tells him, and cranes forward to leave her mark on Tony's neck.

From:

Oh wonderful! I'm kinda jealous of Tim, there.

From:

Tim sandwich, ftw!

From:

mezzo-cammin.livejournal.com

Yay! Made it in before 10!

John/Rodney, pretty please?

From:

They speak in a not-particularly-secret code, made up of inanities that (like still waters) run deep:

"Go ahead and take it, McKay, I'm full."

and

"If you go and get your idiot head blown off I will find a way to kill you again, you can count on it."

Their secret handshake is made up of a thousand tiny touches, of a thousand milliseconds of contact too long. Their decoder ring is held by every member of the expedition, safe in the slightest tilts of their secretive smiles; the worst (and best) kept secret in Atlantis. By Atlantis.

In fact, it's possible that, so far, they're the only ones who haven't quite worked it out.

Give them time.

From:

mezzo-cammin.livejournal.com

Ohhhhhh. That was so wonderful! I love "Their decoder ring is held by every member of the expedition."

Give them time, indeed! :o)

I loved this!! Thank you! Also? Perfect icon!

From:

queenofstars.livejournal.com

There's no such thing as too much John/Rodney, so if I'm the tenth, I'd love me a drabble from you to call my own. *grin*

From: