![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenconversesPicked this up from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
antistar_e. Super long snippets under all the cuts.
Pick five fics that you've abandoned that you wish you'd finished. Post a snippet from each fic and tell us where you were going with it and why you have to leave it.
1. At first, Rosalie despised Edward Cullen with every fiber in her undead body.
She didn’t talk to him for months after her change and she went out of her way to avoid him. She hated the way his mouth turned up in a sneer whenever she entered the room and how he always sighed with exasperation when she spoke, as if it was such a burden to listen to her. She wished she could throw him out a second story window again, like she had when Edward had called her a careless, bloodthirsty shrew the morning after Royce’s body had been found.
She certainly didn’t want him listening in on her thoughts either. That nasty boy knew all of her inner secrets and never failed to dig one up to torment her with when he had the chance. He thought he was so perfect, so much better than her because he didn’t murder people…any more, anyway.
Rosalie had heard of his little ‘rebellion.’ How dare he think less of her for seeking revenge against a group of monsters when he had feed on hundreds of humans because he wanted to indulge his ridiculous God complex!
Edward Cullen was the worst sort of hypocrite, and while she might be shallow, no one was going to find Rosalie Hall sipping on a human’s neck, no matter how evil they might be.
She hadn’t seen Edward in two weeks when Esme asked her to fetch some extra furniture polish from the garage. Esme was working on a restoring an elegant cabinet set for the dining room and the front had been scratched quite a bit. Rosalie had been content watching her, still too afraid of her own strength to touch anything that looked as old and delicate as the cabinet did, but had jumped at the chance at to help in whatever way she could.
The garage was the one place she had never been in the Cullen home. She’d had no reason to go into one during her…other life. The Hales had hired help to take care of business like running errands back and forth from different areas of the property. That was another change she was still getting used to – doing things for herself.
She paused at the door, peeking through the small window to make sure the sun’s rays were hidden. Clouds rolled in every direction in the sky and she stepped out, delighted to be outside for the first time in days.
There was an unfamiliar vehicle sitting in front of the open garage. It was a sleek black creation, long and slim with gleaming silver
“What is this?” Rosalie asked, running her hand along the side of the car as she walked by. It so well polished that she could see her reflection in it. She looked inhumanly beautiful, as she always would be now.
Edward snorted from under the car and she knew he had to be rolling his eyes.
“This is a 1929 Mercedes-Benz SSK,” he said slowly, as if he was explaining this to a child. “It’s a very expensive German racing car and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop griming up the paint with your fingers. I just washed it.”
Rosalie glared at his legs and imagined kicking the jack out from under the Mercedes’s bumper so it would fall and crush Edward’s pasty face. It would be so easy and quick and perfect…
Instead, she walked over to front of the car and bent down beside him.
“How much horsepower does your Mercedes have?”
She heard Edward pause with whatever he was tinkering with underneath the car. A moment later, he slid out, his expression unreadable.
--
Prior to Breaking Dawn's release, I was messing around in Twilight fandom, and Rosalie is my favorite character and she just wasn't getting enough love from fandom. So I decided to write an Edward and Rosalie relationship piece because I'd like to think they were actually fairly close during the early years of the Cullen family. The first moment was supposed to show how Rosalie got her interest in cars, and how Edward began to think of her less an empty headed blonde and more of a friend. This is as far as I got, probably because I lost Rosalie's voice halfway through the thing.
--
2. Five minutes to the end of the period, a folded up note fluttered onto Teyla Emmagan’s desk, drawing her out of her lecture induced stupor. She glanced to right where Liz Weir sat; she was casually scribbling in her notebook, pretending that she had not just violated Ms. Langford’s most sacred rule of no note-passing. Teyla unfolded the note as discretely as possible and read Liz’s curly script.
What are you plans for the weekend?
She frowned and took up her pen.
Do you have to ask any longer? Sam has made color coded schedules for the next ten weekends, provided no apocalypses interrupt.
Teyla made sure that Langford’s back was turned and she tossed the note back onto Liz’s desk. It was back in her hands a few minutes later.
No date for Sunday then?
Valentine’s Day was Sunday and Liz had turned her ‘a’ into a heart with an arrow through it. Ugh.
If I had, you would be the first to know.
You and Lorne have been making googly eyes at each other for weeks. You should just ask him already.
I think not.
But it’s Valentine’s Day! If anyone needs to be worshipped on that day, it’s you.
Maybe the vampires will gift me with chocolates and oversized stuffed bears before I stake them.
Just ask him. It can’t hurt.
What do you not understand about ‘NO’?
ASK HIM!!
Are you going to Atlantis tonight?
Teyla tossed the note over again just as the last bell rang. Liz glanced at the note and then shoved it into the pocket of her jeans with a frown on her face.
“You’re just as bad as changing the subject on a note as you are in actual conversation,” she said, getting up and hoisting her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m good to go to Atlantis tonight. Pre-patrol?”
“Most likely. There has not been much activity lately so I can get started later,” Teyla said, nodding at Ms. Langford as she and Liz left the classroom, and joined the other students in the crowded hall. “Ever since that Sheppard appeared, the others have been very quiet. I believe that does not bode well in the future.”
“He’s an interesting guy, isn’t he?” Liz replied. “I’ve been doing some research on him for Sam. She won’t let me touch the Watcher diaries, of course, but I’ve gathered mentions of him in Notable Demons of the 18th Century, Notable Demons of the 19th Century Second Edition, Monsters of Civil War America and –”
“So he has been around quite a while,” Teyla interrupted, unsettled by this new information about their unlikely ally. She paused at her locker, fiddling with the padlock. “At least 150 years.”
“Yes, but the strange thing is that I can’t find anything about him after the early 20th century. The last recorded information about him is circa 1921 when he’s cited as the cause of death of a Slayer named Chaya,” Liz said, leaning against the lockers beside Teyla. “You’d be interested to know that Chaya lived to ripe age of 27 and instead of slaying later in her career, she practiced…”
Liz trailed off as Rodney McKay approached them, flustered and nervous looking. He usually got that way when he thought Teyla might beat him up, which she had never done but he was convinced she would sometime soon.
He stopped, opened and closed his mouth, and then looked to her, resigned.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with a wince, and continued on his way.
Teyla and Liz stared after him.
“What was that about?” Teyla asked, wrenching her locker open.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “But, more importantly, what did Rodney do that he has to apologize for?”
They exchanged a look. Rodney could have done any number of things from building a nuclear bomb (again), accidentally releasing a demon from the underworld (again), or –
“Hey Teyla! Teyla, hey!”
Or talking to Lucius Lavin and mentioning Teyla’s name in a sentence.
“Oh no,” Teyla groaned, looking to the ceiling. “Please, no.”
“Creeper at twelve o’clock,” Liz said, equally as dismayed. “Here he comes.”
Lucius Lavin, Teyla’s partner from Chemistry last semester, was the most annoying person at Shermer High and managed to flirt with anything with breasts. He was downright creepy when he found a girl to be the object of his affections, following them around to class, constantly asking them out on dates and not getting the anvil-sized hints that his attentions were unwelcome. He was harmless, but exasperating.
Lucius had fixated on Teyla last semester, and he was still bothering her, though not as much he had before she had threatened to break his hand if he ever groped her again. She had changed her current schedule just to avoid him.
“Hey Teyla,” Lucius said, a goofy grin on his pudgy face. He was a good foot taller than her and was always leaning into her space, trying to intimidate her. “How you doing? I miss you in Chem.”
“Hello Lucius,” Teyla responded through gritted teeth. She slammed her locker door shut harder than she meant to; one of the hinges popped loose and she winced. “Liz and I are on our way to my new Chemistry class now, and we are running late. You know how Dr. Carter – ”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure,” Lucius said, nodding. He was staring at her chest and Teyla narrowed her eyes, shifting a book in front of her to block his view. “Are you going to Atlantis tonight? I know you like to go on Thursdays.”
Had Teyla not been raised to be unfailingly polite to everyone she met, including annoying boys and deadly vampires, she would not have been able to keep the look of horror off her face and she would have run for the hills. Liz did not have her tact and was gaping at him.
“We were…discussing it,” Teyla said evenly. “Why?”
“Well, I figured we could go together, sort of a pre-Valentine’s Day date. McKay already said you don’t have one.”
Perhaps this time she was going to kill Rodney. Slowly, painfully, and with lemons.
“Yet,” Liz amended quickly, giving her a nudge in the back. “Sorry, Lucius, but we really need to go. You and Teyla can talk some other time.”
“Okay!” Lucius said, still grinning as they walked past him. “See you tonight, Teyla!”
He shouted his last remark, drawing stares and giggles from the other students in the hallway. Teyla held her head high, trying to keep her blush under control.
“Say what you like about Lucius Lavin,” Liz said, wrapping a comforting arm around Teyla’s shoulders. “But that kid has balls of steel.”
--
Yeah, this was set in the universe of the other fic I wrote where Teyla was a teenage Slayer and John was a nice vampire that I never finished. I fail at finishing crackfic. Anyway, this was the start of a prequel to that fic which explains how John and Teyla get together...sort of. Lucius Lavin slips Teyla a love potion where she's supposed to fall madly in love with him, but John gets slipped some too and hijinks ensue from there. I got about 5K into the fic, and it probably would've gone on for another 5K+ if I had let it, but I was trying to do this fic for Valentine's Day and then it passed, so I lost my motivation.
--
3. One
“Sam!”
He paused as Mikaela ran up to him and grabbed him, gripping his sweatshirt in her grimy, bloodied hands. She looked as desperately frightened as Sam knew he must be, and even with her hair in her eyes and dirt on her face, she was still the most gorgeous girl Sam’s ever known. He drank in the sight of her, suspecting this could be the last time he sees her.
“No matter what happens,” she said breathlessly, her eyes burning. “I’m really glad I got in that car with you.”
He wasn’t expecting her to say that, and it stunned him momentarily. Any other girl – any other person – would’ve run screaming in the opposite direction by now, but Mikaela Banes was not just any girl. He’s always known there was something different about her, something that makes her stronger than anyone Sam’s ever known.
If this was a movie, the distant, detached part of Sam brain that’s on a beach in Florida instead of here thought, this would be the moment where he’d be a hero, sweep Mikaela up in his arms, kiss her and declare his undying love for her.
But this wasn’t a movie, and he barely has a moment to nod at her before Ironhide bellowed at him to get moving and something exploded in the distance.
Her fingers slid from his sweatshirt as he turned away, hefting the All-Spark under his arm, and preparing to run for his life.
If – when he got back, he’ll have his heroic moment, Sam decided as his sneakers pound into the pavement. He’ll make it back and he’ll tell her everything.
*
Two
Even though he survived shoving the All-Spark into Megatron’s chest and pretty much saved the entire planet, Sam never really got his heroic moment that day, which completely sucked ass. Sure, it was great being acknowledged by Optimus and seeing Simmons sour face when he found out who saved Earth, but it was nothing compared to how a kiss from a cute girl would’ve felt.
After they survived the whole Mission City thing and their adrenaline died down, Mikaela freaked out and claimed she needed space to deal with everything that had happened. “Space” just happened to translate into hanging out with Trent DeMarco and all her superficial friends again, and acting like he didn’t exist – like she had always done. Sam hadn’t been too mad at her for it because, given the chance, he’d like to pretend he didn’t have an alien guardian living with him for a couple of weeks and go back to being a – a –
No, he decided, he wouldn’t. Before the Autobots fell into his life, he was just a bumbling nobody who was barely a blip on the high school social radar. Now, he was somebody and he had done something that Trent and all those other jocks couldn’t take away from him. He wouldn’t give up that feeling for anything.
Mikaela’s “space” thing lasted throughout the week and a half Bumblebee was being repaired by Ratchet. When the Camaro had shown up at school, gleaming in perfection, it was like she couldn’t ignore the fact that they had, in fact, survived the almost end of the world.
His moment didn’t come until a few weeks later, in the perfectly normal setting of his kitchen and with no alien robots (well, except for the one hanging out in the garage, that was) in sight.
His parents weren’t home at the moment, thank God, because Sam’s sure his mom would’ve thrown a fit at the sight of her son’s ripped shirt, bleeding lip, and swollen eye. She’d been ten times as overprotective of him as she was in the past, all thanks to a weekend kidnapping by the government and said alien robots, and her fussing in front of Mikaela probably would’ve killed whatever shred of dignity he had left. It was bad enough that his car had thrown a hissy fit at the sight of him walking out of school…
“Here,” Mikaela said as she cracked an ice pack over a bare knee and handed it to him. “Put this on your eye.”
Sam complied, hissing as the cold material presses against his inflamed skin. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, wincing as the edge digs into some still fading bruises on his back. Figured he’d get himself beat up again just when he was getting used to not waking up sore and stiff.
“I know you think you’re Mr. Invincible and everything now, but you should’ve known better than taking on Trent,” Mikaela said as she rummaged around in a first aid kit, looking for a roll of bandages. “He’s been looking for an excuse to pulverize you for the last week.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I would’ve been fine if your stupid meathead of a boyfriend didn’t need three other guys to help protect his manhood,” Sam replied sharply, ignoring the throb in his cut lip.
…
“Because he’s a jerk! He said some stupid stuff about you and I – ” I love you. “ – I just think you deserve better than that.”
Mikaela looks at him like she knows exactly what he wanted to say.
--
I swear, I must be the only person who actually liked the Sam/Mikaela angle from the second Transformers movie. Okay, yeah it was kind of overblown and took away from the AWESOME ROBOT SMASH screentime and Mikaela is way more awesome in my head than in canon, but whatever. I like it. And this fic was going to be five moments in their relationship where Mikaela was more awesome than she was in canon, but I stopped writing it because I ended up using one of Mikaela's being kickass scenes for a Percy Jackson fic instead. Specifically, the Percy-shows-up-late-to-prom but Annabeth proceeds to go kill monsters with him anyway scene from "Better Late Than Never." There ain't nothing wrong with recycling, ya'll!
--
4. 2007
The first time Harry ever heard about Camp Half-Blood was on his first day of his new job as head of the Auror Department. His secretary was going through the morning list of “International Threats to United Kingdom’s Wizarding Population” and somehow, in-between a report on increased communication between North Korean and Iranian wizards and several murders of Muggles in France, the mention of a children’s summer camp in North America snuck in.
“Camp Half-Blood in Long Island, New York, is reporting their protective borders are failing and they’ve sent a few campers on a quest to rectify this, but they haven’t the slightest clue how that’s going to go,” the secretary recited in a bored tone. “The memo added that if the kids fail, the camp will probably be wiped out and we’ll have an influx of monsters on our hands. The usual business with them, then.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Harry said, holding up a hand. “Camp Half-Blood?”
His secretary paused, glancing over the parchment in his hands very carefully, and then nodded.
“Yes, Camp Half-Blood, the training camp for demigods,” he said, rolling his eyes. “The Department of International Magical Cooperation usually deals with them, but we like to keep an eye out too, just in case. You never know what sort of trouble those demigods are going to cause.”
Even after nearly twenty years in the wizarding world, Harry was still amazed by how he continued to be surprised about everything in it. Even though he had no idea what a demigod was or how concerned he should be about one, but he decided not to ask. He knew he was going to make enough of a fool out of himself today and the rest of the week as it was, and he didn’t need his secretary to think he was a bumbling idiot who only got the job because he was The Man Who Killed You-Know-Who and personal friends with the Minister of Magic.
He waves at his secretary to continue down the list of messages as he scribbles down a reminder note to ask somebody to explain demigods to him or, at the very least, go rummaging through his predecessor’s closet of filing cabinets sometime soon.
*
“Camp Half-Blood?”
Hermione looks up sharply from her legal briefs and Harry nods, taking a bite out of his sandwich. He, Ron, and Hermione are doing their weekly lunch at the Leaky Cauldron – sometimes it’s the only time they get to see each other without their busying schedules, various offspring to attend to, and other duties getting in the way.
“Yeah, you know anything about it? It came up in one of the briefs, and I didn’t want to look stupid by asking the nineteen year old secretary about it – ”
“Bet that didn’t stop you anyway, mate,” Ron says, pausing in his effort to inhale the pile of pasta and sauce on his plate.
“Oh, shut it, you prat,” Harry says, returning his grin. “Anyway, he said something about demigods too.”
--
So. I started this before The Last Olympian came out, and the basic premise was that Harry's mind is still pretty open to ~evil thoughts~ and he starts dreaming about Percy throughout the events of the first four PJO books. Harry thinks that he's having premonitions about one of his children (c'mon, Riordan, black hair and green eyes? You've got make crossovers loads harder than this!) until he gets called over to America and really meets Percy for the first time. There's this entire subplot where all wizards are descendants of Hecate and that particularly strong wizards like Dumbledore have a lot of demigod blood in their ancestry, and some stuff about American wizards getting pulled into the second war of the Titans and aren't prepared for it because they like ignoring the demigods, so they have to ask the British Aurors for help. Basically, it was my excuse for Harry and Percy to do some side-by-side ass kicking during the Battle of New York.Although Percy would totally out badass Harry. Just sayin', yo.
Never finished it because I lost the jump drive that had an extra two pages on it with important scenes, and I was so mad about it, I didn't want to rewrite it because it wouldn't be as good. Plus TLO came out and blew my plot out of the water. I've been thinking about going back and trying to write it again, but it's just such an exhausting plot.
--
5. If it hadn’t been for that stupid girl’s night at the beginning of the summer, Annabeth wouldn’t be obsessing about this. It wouldn’t be the first thing she thought about in the morning, daydreamed about when she should be working on her sketches or the last thought in her head before she drifted off into sleep to dream even more about it. It would’ve stayed in the back of her mind, occasionally rearing its ugly head at unexpected moments instead of taking over her life for the last few weeks.
If it hadn’t been for that damn talk, it wouldn’t be what she thought about whenever she so much as looked at her best friend, savior of the Olympians and officially voted Best Looking Bachelor at camp by the Aphrodite cabin, Percy Jackson. Because the last thing she should be thinking about when it came to Percy was how it’d feel to really kiss him.
After all, their kiss two years ago wasn’t much to brag about – a quick, goodbye peck on the lips because she thought he was going to die. It was nothing like what Clarisse and some of the other girls had described as really kissing boys.
Annabeth had sat there, listening to them describe their romantic lives with a growing blush on her cheeks and all while she realized she never been really kissed once in her life, let alone had an experience that went beyond kissing like some of the other girls.
She’d been kissed by Luke, before he turned to Lord Kronos to solve his problems. They were innocent pecks on the lips, kisses – she realized now – that belong to an older brother figure in love with another girl instead of her one true love.
Of course, there was the time when she was 13, when she’d been forced to kiss one of the Stoll brothers during an intra-cabin game of Truth or Dare. That had been a sloppy, wet thing that could hardly count as a kiss because Travis Stoll had done his best to make her as uncomfortable as possible.
And then there was Percy.
Percy, that stupid seaweed head, who had disappeared under the ocean without so much of a look back at her to live with his father once he defeated Kronos. There’d been no messages from him for months – even his mother and Grover hadn’t heard from him. Annabeth had been so angry with him, until he’d sent her a delicate grey pearl on a gold string for her birthday and a small note:
Color reminded me of your eyes. Miss you.
-Percy
For the next two years, Annabeth, Sally and his other friends got similar brief messages and the occasional tokens from him but other than that, there was nothing. Chiron suspected that Percy was helping his father clean up the last remnants of the Titans in the ocean which was why his contact was limited with the surface world. She’d tried not to be mad at him, she really did, but it was so hard sometimes.
When she returned to camp this summer, she did as she had done the year before and waited for him down by the beach at twilight each night. Sometimes Grover, Juniper or Chiron joined her, but usually it was just her. She wanted Percy to have someone to be there for him when he came back, even though she only waited for an hour or so.
Three weeks ago, she had been drawing building plans in the sand when it finally happened – Percy walked out of the surf (dry and shirtless, of all things!) a foot taller, much more impossibly handsome than she remembered and with seaweed sticking to his bare shoulders. She’d been shocked beyond words at his appearance – she’d had to touch him with shaking hands just to make sure he was real.
Right then on the beach, with the sun setting and her hands on his shoulders, would’ve been the perfect time for a real kiss. It would’ve been perfect and she would’ve had something romantic to brag about at girl’s night that weekend.
But what had she done instead? Insult him.
“I see all that pressure has finally caused this to leak out from between your ears,” Annabeth said, crinkling her nose and picking the drying seaweed off his shoulders. “If you’re not careful, you won’t have any left and then where will you be, Seaweed Brain?”
“Same old Annabeth,” Percy said in a new, deeper voice that sent shivers down her spine. He smiled at her and she felt her knees actually buckle at the sight of it after two years. “Glad to see something’s haven’t changed.”
And apparently one of those things that hadn’t changed was the state of their relationship.
--
Oh, Lord. This was like one of the first fics I started writing for PJO, right after I discovered the books, devoured them whole in less than a week, and then realized that the PJO fandom was a festering black hole of nothingness on FFnet. And thus, my first thought to contribute to fandom? HMM, THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ENOUGH PERCY AND ANNABETH RANDOMLY MAKING OUT ONCE THEY TURN 18 FICS. I SHOULD RECTIFY THIS. I started writing this before TLO came out, just before I started writing "Annabeth's Choice/Percy's Flaw," but I abandoned it because I got freaked out by the flamers forum on FFnet. I'm a chicken shit, I know. I tried to go back to it after I had published other fic, but then TLO was released and pretty much blew it out of the water for obvious reasons.
antistar_e. Super long snippets under all the cuts.Pick five fics that you've abandoned that you wish you'd finished. Post a snippet from each fic and tell us where you were going with it and why you have to leave it.
1. At first, Rosalie despised Edward Cullen with every fiber in her undead body.
She didn’t talk to him for months after her change and she went out of her way to avoid him. She hated the way his mouth turned up in a sneer whenever she entered the room and how he always sighed with exasperation when she spoke, as if it was such a burden to listen to her. She wished she could throw him out a second story window again, like she had when Edward had called her a careless, bloodthirsty shrew the morning after Royce’s body had been found.
She certainly didn’t want him listening in on her thoughts either. That nasty boy knew all of her inner secrets and never failed to dig one up to torment her with when he had the chance. He thought he was so perfect, so much better than her because he didn’t murder people…any more, anyway.
Rosalie had heard of his little ‘rebellion.’ How dare he think less of her for seeking revenge against a group of monsters when he had feed on hundreds of humans because he wanted to indulge his ridiculous God complex!
Edward Cullen was the worst sort of hypocrite, and while she might be shallow, no one was going to find Rosalie Hall sipping on a human’s neck, no matter how evil they might be.
She hadn’t seen Edward in two weeks when Esme asked her to fetch some extra furniture polish from the garage. Esme was working on a restoring an elegant cabinet set for the dining room and the front had been scratched quite a bit. Rosalie had been content watching her, still too afraid of her own strength to touch anything that looked as old and delicate as the cabinet did, but had jumped at the chance at to help in whatever way she could.
The garage was the one place she had never been in the Cullen home. She’d had no reason to go into one during her…other life. The Hales had hired help to take care of business like running errands back and forth from different areas of the property. That was another change she was still getting used to – doing things for herself.
She paused at the door, peeking through the small window to make sure the sun’s rays were hidden. Clouds rolled in every direction in the sky and she stepped out, delighted to be outside for the first time in days.
There was an unfamiliar vehicle sitting in front of the open garage. It was a sleek black creation, long and slim with gleaming silver
“What is this?” Rosalie asked, running her hand along the side of the car as she walked by. It so well polished that she could see her reflection in it. She looked inhumanly beautiful, as she always would be now.
Edward snorted from under the car and she knew he had to be rolling his eyes.
“This is a 1929 Mercedes-Benz SSK,” he said slowly, as if he was explaining this to a child. “It’s a very expensive German racing car and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop griming up the paint with your fingers. I just washed it.”
Rosalie glared at his legs and imagined kicking the jack out from under the Mercedes’s bumper so it would fall and crush Edward’s pasty face. It would be so easy and quick and perfect…
Instead, she walked over to front of the car and bent down beside him.
“How much horsepower does your Mercedes have?”
She heard Edward pause with whatever he was tinkering with underneath the car. A moment later, he slid out, his expression unreadable.
--
Prior to Breaking Dawn's release, I was messing around in Twilight fandom, and Rosalie is my favorite character and she just wasn't getting enough love from fandom. So I decided to write an Edward and Rosalie relationship piece because I'd like to think they were actually fairly close during the early years of the Cullen family. The first moment was supposed to show how Rosalie got her interest in cars, and how Edward began to think of her less an empty headed blonde and more of a friend. This is as far as I got, probably because I lost Rosalie's voice halfway through the thing.
--
2. Five minutes to the end of the period, a folded up note fluttered onto Teyla Emmagan’s desk, drawing her out of her lecture induced stupor. She glanced to right where Liz Weir sat; she was casually scribbling in her notebook, pretending that she had not just violated Ms. Langford’s most sacred rule of no note-passing. Teyla unfolded the note as discretely as possible and read Liz’s curly script.
What are you plans for the weekend?
She frowned and took up her pen.
Do you have to ask any longer? Sam has made color coded schedules for the next ten weekends, provided no apocalypses interrupt.
Teyla made sure that Langford’s back was turned and she tossed the note back onto Liz’s desk. It was back in her hands a few minutes later.
No date for Sunday then?
Valentine’s Day was Sunday and Liz had turned her ‘a’ into a heart with an arrow through it. Ugh.
If I had, you would be the first to know.
You and Lorne have been making googly eyes at each other for weeks. You should just ask him already.
I think not.
But it’s Valentine’s Day! If anyone needs to be worshipped on that day, it’s you.
Maybe the vampires will gift me with chocolates and oversized stuffed bears before I stake them.
Just ask him. It can’t hurt.
What do you not understand about ‘NO’?
ASK HIM!!
Are you going to Atlantis tonight?
Teyla tossed the note over again just as the last bell rang. Liz glanced at the note and then shoved it into the pocket of her jeans with a frown on her face.
“You’re just as bad as changing the subject on a note as you are in actual conversation,” she said, getting up and hoisting her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m good to go to Atlantis tonight. Pre-patrol?”
“Most likely. There has not been much activity lately so I can get started later,” Teyla said, nodding at Ms. Langford as she and Liz left the classroom, and joined the other students in the crowded hall. “Ever since that Sheppard appeared, the others have been very quiet. I believe that does not bode well in the future.”
“He’s an interesting guy, isn’t he?” Liz replied. “I’ve been doing some research on him for Sam. She won’t let me touch the Watcher diaries, of course, but I’ve gathered mentions of him in Notable Demons of the 18th Century, Notable Demons of the 19th Century Second Edition, Monsters of Civil War America and –”
“So he has been around quite a while,” Teyla interrupted, unsettled by this new information about their unlikely ally. She paused at her locker, fiddling with the padlock. “At least 150 years.”
“Yes, but the strange thing is that I can’t find anything about him after the early 20th century. The last recorded information about him is circa 1921 when he’s cited as the cause of death of a Slayer named Chaya,” Liz said, leaning against the lockers beside Teyla. “You’d be interested to know that Chaya lived to ripe age of 27 and instead of slaying later in her career, she practiced…”
Liz trailed off as Rodney McKay approached them, flustered and nervous looking. He usually got that way when he thought Teyla might beat him up, which she had never done but he was convinced she would sometime soon.
He stopped, opened and closed his mouth, and then looked to her, resigned.
“I’m so sorry,” he said with a wince, and continued on his way.
Teyla and Liz stared after him.
“What was that about?” Teyla asked, wrenching her locker open.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “But, more importantly, what did Rodney do that he has to apologize for?”
They exchanged a look. Rodney could have done any number of things from building a nuclear bomb (again), accidentally releasing a demon from the underworld (again), or –
“Hey Teyla! Teyla, hey!”
Or talking to Lucius Lavin and mentioning Teyla’s name in a sentence.
“Oh no,” Teyla groaned, looking to the ceiling. “Please, no.”
“Creeper at twelve o’clock,” Liz said, equally as dismayed. “Here he comes.”
Lucius Lavin, Teyla’s partner from Chemistry last semester, was the most annoying person at Shermer High and managed to flirt with anything with breasts. He was downright creepy when he found a girl to be the object of his affections, following them around to class, constantly asking them out on dates and not getting the anvil-sized hints that his attentions were unwelcome. He was harmless, but exasperating.
Lucius had fixated on Teyla last semester, and he was still bothering her, though not as much he had before she had threatened to break his hand if he ever groped her again. She had changed her current schedule just to avoid him.
“Hey Teyla,” Lucius said, a goofy grin on his pudgy face. He was a good foot taller than her and was always leaning into her space, trying to intimidate her. “How you doing? I miss you in Chem.”
“Hello Lucius,” Teyla responded through gritted teeth. She slammed her locker door shut harder than she meant to; one of the hinges popped loose and she winced. “Liz and I are on our way to my new Chemistry class now, and we are running late. You know how Dr. Carter – ”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure,” Lucius said, nodding. He was staring at her chest and Teyla narrowed her eyes, shifting a book in front of her to block his view. “Are you going to Atlantis tonight? I know you like to go on Thursdays.”
Had Teyla not been raised to be unfailingly polite to everyone she met, including annoying boys and deadly vampires, she would not have been able to keep the look of horror off her face and she would have run for the hills. Liz did not have her tact and was gaping at him.
“We were…discussing it,” Teyla said evenly. “Why?”
“Well, I figured we could go together, sort of a pre-Valentine’s Day date. McKay already said you don’t have one.”
Perhaps this time she was going to kill Rodney. Slowly, painfully, and with lemons.
“Yet,” Liz amended quickly, giving her a nudge in the back. “Sorry, Lucius, but we really need to go. You and Teyla can talk some other time.”
“Okay!” Lucius said, still grinning as they walked past him. “See you tonight, Teyla!”
He shouted his last remark, drawing stares and giggles from the other students in the hallway. Teyla held her head high, trying to keep her blush under control.
“Say what you like about Lucius Lavin,” Liz said, wrapping a comforting arm around Teyla’s shoulders. “But that kid has balls of steel.”
--
Yeah, this was set in the universe of the other fic I wrote where Teyla was a teenage Slayer and John was a nice vampire that I never finished. I fail at finishing crackfic. Anyway, this was the start of a prequel to that fic which explains how John and Teyla get together...sort of. Lucius Lavin slips Teyla a love potion where she's supposed to fall madly in love with him, but John gets slipped some too and hijinks ensue from there. I got about 5K into the fic, and it probably would've gone on for another 5K+ if I had let it, but I was trying to do this fic for Valentine's Day and then it passed, so I lost my motivation.
--
3. One
“Sam!”
He paused as Mikaela ran up to him and grabbed him, gripping his sweatshirt in her grimy, bloodied hands. She looked as desperately frightened as Sam knew he must be, and even with her hair in her eyes and dirt on her face, she was still the most gorgeous girl Sam’s ever known. He drank in the sight of her, suspecting this could be the last time he sees her.
“No matter what happens,” she said breathlessly, her eyes burning. “I’m really glad I got in that car with you.”
He wasn’t expecting her to say that, and it stunned him momentarily. Any other girl – any other person – would’ve run screaming in the opposite direction by now, but Mikaela Banes was not just any girl. He’s always known there was something different about her, something that makes her stronger than anyone Sam’s ever known.
If this was a movie, the distant, detached part of Sam brain that’s on a beach in Florida instead of here thought, this would be the moment where he’d be a hero, sweep Mikaela up in his arms, kiss her and declare his undying love for her.
But this wasn’t a movie, and he barely has a moment to nod at her before Ironhide bellowed at him to get moving and something exploded in the distance.
Her fingers slid from his sweatshirt as he turned away, hefting the All-Spark under his arm, and preparing to run for his life.
If – when he got back, he’ll have his heroic moment, Sam decided as his sneakers pound into the pavement. He’ll make it back and he’ll tell her everything.
*
Two
Even though he survived shoving the All-Spark into Megatron’s chest and pretty much saved the entire planet, Sam never really got his heroic moment that day, which completely sucked ass. Sure, it was great being acknowledged by Optimus and seeing Simmons sour face when he found out who saved Earth, but it was nothing compared to how a kiss from a cute girl would’ve felt.
After they survived the whole Mission City thing and their adrenaline died down, Mikaela freaked out and claimed she needed space to deal with everything that had happened. “Space” just happened to translate into hanging out with Trent DeMarco and all her superficial friends again, and acting like he didn’t exist – like she had always done. Sam hadn’t been too mad at her for it because, given the chance, he’d like to pretend he didn’t have an alien guardian living with him for a couple of weeks and go back to being a – a –
No, he decided, he wouldn’t. Before the Autobots fell into his life, he was just a bumbling nobody who was barely a blip on the high school social radar. Now, he was somebody and he had done something that Trent and all those other jocks couldn’t take away from him. He wouldn’t give up that feeling for anything.
Mikaela’s “space” thing lasted throughout the week and a half Bumblebee was being repaired by Ratchet. When the Camaro had shown up at school, gleaming in perfection, it was like she couldn’t ignore the fact that they had, in fact, survived the almost end of the world.
His moment didn’t come until a few weeks later, in the perfectly normal setting of his kitchen and with no alien robots (well, except for the one hanging out in the garage, that was) in sight.
His parents weren’t home at the moment, thank God, because Sam’s sure his mom would’ve thrown a fit at the sight of her son’s ripped shirt, bleeding lip, and swollen eye. She’d been ten times as overprotective of him as she was in the past, all thanks to a weekend kidnapping by the government and said alien robots, and her fussing in front of Mikaela probably would’ve killed whatever shred of dignity he had left. It was bad enough that his car had thrown a hissy fit at the sight of him walking out of school…
“Here,” Mikaela said as she cracked an ice pack over a bare knee and handed it to him. “Put this on your eye.”
Sam complied, hissing as the cold material presses against his inflamed skin. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, wincing as the edge digs into some still fading bruises on his back. Figured he’d get himself beat up again just when he was getting used to not waking up sore and stiff.
“I know you think you’re Mr. Invincible and everything now, but you should’ve known better than taking on Trent,” Mikaela said as she rummaged around in a first aid kit, looking for a roll of bandages. “He’s been looking for an excuse to pulverize you for the last week.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I would’ve been fine if your stupid meathead of a boyfriend didn’t need three other guys to help protect his manhood,” Sam replied sharply, ignoring the throb in his cut lip.
…
“Because he’s a jerk! He said some stupid stuff about you and I – ” I love you. “ – I just think you deserve better than that.”
Mikaela looks at him like she knows exactly what he wanted to say.
--
I swear, I must be the only person who actually liked the Sam/Mikaela angle from the second Transformers movie. Okay, yeah it was kind of overblown and took away from the AWESOME ROBOT SMASH screentime and Mikaela is way more awesome in my head than in canon, but whatever. I like it. And this fic was going to be five moments in their relationship where Mikaela was more awesome than she was in canon, but I stopped writing it because I ended up using one of Mikaela's being kickass scenes for a Percy Jackson fic instead. Specifically, the Percy-shows-up-late-to-prom but Annabeth proceeds to go kill monsters with him anyway scene from "Better Late Than Never." There ain't nothing wrong with recycling, ya'll!
--
4. 2007
The first time Harry ever heard about Camp Half-Blood was on his first day of his new job as head of the Auror Department. His secretary was going through the morning list of “International Threats to United Kingdom’s Wizarding Population” and somehow, in-between a report on increased communication between North Korean and Iranian wizards and several murders of Muggles in France, the mention of a children’s summer camp in North America snuck in.
“Camp Half-Blood in Long Island, New York, is reporting their protective borders are failing and they’ve sent a few campers on a quest to rectify this, but they haven’t the slightest clue how that’s going to go,” the secretary recited in a bored tone. “The memo added that if the kids fail, the camp will probably be wiped out and we’ll have an influx of monsters on our hands. The usual business with them, then.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Harry said, holding up a hand. “Camp Half-Blood?”
His secretary paused, glancing over the parchment in his hands very carefully, and then nodded.
“Yes, Camp Half-Blood, the training camp for demigods,” he said, rolling his eyes. “The Department of International Magical Cooperation usually deals with them, but we like to keep an eye out too, just in case. You never know what sort of trouble those demigods are going to cause.”
Even after nearly twenty years in the wizarding world, Harry was still amazed by how he continued to be surprised about everything in it. Even though he had no idea what a demigod was or how concerned he should be about one, but he decided not to ask. He knew he was going to make enough of a fool out of himself today and the rest of the week as it was, and he didn’t need his secretary to think he was a bumbling idiot who only got the job because he was The Man Who Killed You-Know-Who and personal friends with the Minister of Magic.
He waves at his secretary to continue down the list of messages as he scribbles down a reminder note to ask somebody to explain demigods to him or, at the very least, go rummaging through his predecessor’s closet of filing cabinets sometime soon.
*
“Camp Half-Blood?”
Hermione looks up sharply from her legal briefs and Harry nods, taking a bite out of his sandwich. He, Ron, and Hermione are doing their weekly lunch at the Leaky Cauldron – sometimes it’s the only time they get to see each other without their busying schedules, various offspring to attend to, and other duties getting in the way.
“Yeah, you know anything about it? It came up in one of the briefs, and I didn’t want to look stupid by asking the nineteen year old secretary about it – ”
“Bet that didn’t stop you anyway, mate,” Ron says, pausing in his effort to inhale the pile of pasta and sauce on his plate.
“Oh, shut it, you prat,” Harry says, returning his grin. “Anyway, he said something about demigods too.”
--
So. I started this before The Last Olympian came out, and the basic premise was that Harry's mind is still pretty open to ~evil thoughts~ and he starts dreaming about Percy throughout the events of the first four PJO books. Harry thinks that he's having premonitions about one of his children (c'mon, Riordan, black hair and green eyes? You've got make crossovers loads harder than this!) until he gets called over to America and really meets Percy for the first time. There's this entire subplot where all wizards are descendants of Hecate and that particularly strong wizards like Dumbledore have a lot of demigod blood in their ancestry, and some stuff about American wizards getting pulled into the second war of the Titans and aren't prepared for it because they like ignoring the demigods, so they have to ask the British Aurors for help. Basically, it was my excuse for Harry and Percy to do some side-by-side ass kicking during the Battle of New York.
Never finished it because I lost the jump drive that had an extra two pages on it with important scenes, and I was so mad about it, I didn't want to rewrite it because it wouldn't be as good. Plus TLO came out and blew my plot out of the water. I've been thinking about going back and trying to write it again, but it's just such an exhausting plot.
--
5. If it hadn’t been for that stupid girl’s night at the beginning of the summer, Annabeth wouldn’t be obsessing about this. It wouldn’t be the first thing she thought about in the morning, daydreamed about when she should be working on her sketches or the last thought in her head before she drifted off into sleep to dream even more about it. It would’ve stayed in the back of her mind, occasionally rearing its ugly head at unexpected moments instead of taking over her life for the last few weeks.
If it hadn’t been for that damn talk, it wouldn’t be what she thought about whenever she so much as looked at her best friend, savior of the Olympians and officially voted Best Looking Bachelor at camp by the Aphrodite cabin, Percy Jackson. Because the last thing she should be thinking about when it came to Percy was how it’d feel to really kiss him.
After all, their kiss two years ago wasn’t much to brag about – a quick, goodbye peck on the lips because she thought he was going to die. It was nothing like what Clarisse and some of the other girls had described as really kissing boys.
Annabeth had sat there, listening to them describe their romantic lives with a growing blush on her cheeks and all while she realized she never been really kissed once in her life, let alone had an experience that went beyond kissing like some of the other girls.
She’d been kissed by Luke, before he turned to Lord Kronos to solve his problems. They were innocent pecks on the lips, kisses – she realized now – that belong to an older brother figure in love with another girl instead of her one true love.
Of course, there was the time when she was 13, when she’d been forced to kiss one of the Stoll brothers during an intra-cabin game of Truth or Dare. That had been a sloppy, wet thing that could hardly count as a kiss because Travis Stoll had done his best to make her as uncomfortable as possible.
And then there was Percy.
Percy, that stupid seaweed head, who had disappeared under the ocean without so much of a look back at her to live with his father once he defeated Kronos. There’d been no messages from him for months – even his mother and Grover hadn’t heard from him. Annabeth had been so angry with him, until he’d sent her a delicate grey pearl on a gold string for her birthday and a small note:
Color reminded me of your eyes. Miss you.
-Percy
For the next two years, Annabeth, Sally and his other friends got similar brief messages and the occasional tokens from him but other than that, there was nothing. Chiron suspected that Percy was helping his father clean up the last remnants of the Titans in the ocean which was why his contact was limited with the surface world. She’d tried not to be mad at him, she really did, but it was so hard sometimes.
When she returned to camp this summer, she did as she had done the year before and waited for him down by the beach at twilight each night. Sometimes Grover, Juniper or Chiron joined her, but usually it was just her. She wanted Percy to have someone to be there for him when he came back, even though she only waited for an hour or so.
Three weeks ago, she had been drawing building plans in the sand when it finally happened – Percy walked out of the surf (dry and shirtless, of all things!) a foot taller, much more impossibly handsome than she remembered and with seaweed sticking to his bare shoulders. She’d been shocked beyond words at his appearance – she’d had to touch him with shaking hands just to make sure he was real.
Right then on the beach, with the sun setting and her hands on his shoulders, would’ve been the perfect time for a real kiss. It would’ve been perfect and she would’ve had something romantic to brag about at girl’s night that weekend.
But what had she done instead? Insult him.
“I see all that pressure has finally caused this to leak out from between your ears,” Annabeth said, crinkling her nose and picking the drying seaweed off his shoulders. “If you’re not careful, you won’t have any left and then where will you be, Seaweed Brain?”
“Same old Annabeth,” Percy said in a new, deeper voice that sent shivers down her spine. He smiled at her and she felt her knees actually buckle at the sight of it after two years. “Glad to see something’s haven’t changed.”
And apparently one of those things that hadn’t changed was the state of their relationship.
--
Oh, Lord. This was like one of the first fics I started writing for PJO, right after I discovered the books, devoured them whole in less than a week, and then realized that the PJO fandom was a festering black hole of nothingness on FFnet. And thus, my first thought to contribute to fandom? HMM, THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ENOUGH PERCY AND ANNABETH RANDOMLY MAKING OUT ONCE THEY TURN 18 FICS. I SHOULD RECTIFY THIS. I started writing this before TLO came out, just before I started writing "Annabeth's Choice/Percy's Flaw," but I abandoned it because I got freaked out by the flamers forum on FFnet. I'm a chicken shit, I know. I tried to go back to it after I had published other fic, but then TLO was released and pretty much blew it out of the water for obvious reasons.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:53 am (UTC)#2 is interesting.
#3 is....*tsh* fun and silly, very enjoyable.
the only way #4 could've been better, imho, is if there was a look at Hermione's reaction to hearing of "a half-blood camp", given that, in the Potter novels, she is one.
#5 was fun and amusing, with a bit (hint? twinge?) of sadness.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 08:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 10:06 am (UTC)I know you pretty much plan on never putting them up, but I LOVE the last two!!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-19 06:38 am (UTC)