Fringe Secret Santa 2011!
Oct. 24th, 2011 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fringe_kinkmemeIn a festive mood for Fringe? For a gift exchange of fiction, art including icons, or vids?
Then you're about to enter the right universe:
1.
To SIGN UP, all you need to do is add a comment to this very post containing your request.
Sign-ups arebetween now and 1 Novemberclosed now. All the requests will be jumbled up and sent back out by 6 November.
2.
RESPONSES to gift requests are to be posted between 16 and 23 December --
ideally anonymously (with your reveal after Christmas, i.e. after 25 December, in your own fanspace). Two ways to do this:
a) Add your response as an anon comment to the request you've been matched up with. (For fic, that allows for roughly 3,000 words in one comment, multiples of course encouraged. Vids & art are trickier, but only a bit.)
b) Jot down the link to the actual response in a blog, on the AO3 (pseudonyms option suggested), or any other platform. (If you need an invite code for the AO3, tell us, and you'll have it in no time.)
If anon doesn't work for you -- no dummy accounts possible, or your working hours look a lot like Olivia's -- that's fine; post the link to your own fanspace with the response. Just, don't tell Alt!Astrid.
3.
Please don't sign up if you believe you'll be unable to complete a request given to you.
If you realise you can't make it, please tell us as early as possible, and we will try to organise a pinch hitter so that your recipient isn't left without a gift at the end of the fest.
4.
Now!
To join the exchange, post a request with the following information:
Happy holidays! And thanks to the ever-excellent mods over atsga_santa, from whom the template for this text is snagged with permission.
Feel free to snag this Fringe Secret Santa icon. More yet to come...
<||:)>
Then you're about to enter the right universe:
1.
To SIGN UP, all you need to do is add a comment to this very post containing your request.
Sign-ups are
2.
RESPONSES to gift requests are to be posted between 16 and 23 December --
ideally anonymously (with your reveal after Christmas, i.e. after 25 December, in your own fanspace). Two ways to do this:
a) Add your response as an anon comment to the request you've been matched up with. (For fic, that allows for roughly 3,000 words in one comment, multiples of course encouraged. Vids & art are trickier, but only a bit.)
b) Jot down the link to the actual response in a blog, on the AO3 (pseudonyms option suggested), or any other platform. (If you need an invite code for the AO3, tell us, and you'll have it in no time.)
If anon doesn't work for you -- no dummy accounts possible, or your working hours look a lot like Olivia's -- that's fine; post the link to your own fanspace with the response. Just, don't tell Alt!Astrid.
3.
Please don't sign up if you believe you'll be unable to complete a request given to you.
If you realise you can't make it, please tell us as early as possible, and we will try to organise a pinch hitter so that your recipient isn't left without a gift at the end of the fest.
4.
Now!
To join the exchange, post a request with the following information:
Blog: [DW handle] OR [LJ handle] OR [AO3 account] OR [ff.net handle] OR [...]The Fringe Secret Santa is open to fanfic, fanart including icons, and fanvids; on the fic side everything goes -- all we ask for is a minimum wordcount of 750, that kinks are tagged and warnings included.
E-mail: Should of course be working.
Things I'd like: Please request at least three things here...but ultimately feel free to add as many things as you'd like at this point. Doesn't mean you'll get them all, but there's no harm in asking, and it ensures you get a great Secret Santa match. If you'd like a specific pairing or character, then speak now or forever hold thy peace. Don't forget to ask for icons or vids too -- we all know the likelihood is low in a small fandom such as this one, but hey. Worth a shot!
Things I wouldn't like: If there's anything you wouldn't like to receive (pairing in a fic, French electropop for your vid, bright-green textures in your icons) then here's the place to mention it. Without character-, pairing-, or kink-bashing, of course.
What I can do: Are you great at a certain genre (gen, het, slash)? Are you the specialist for writing specific character/s or pairing/s? One of the excellent Fringe vidders out there, or an icon-maker with aspirations? One of the folks on tumblr who brighten every Fringe fan's day? As ever, specifics are great so your match brings you tears of happiness instead of, you know, the opposite.
What I can't do: If there's anything you feel you can't do, then please say so here. Same disclaimer as above applies.
Pinch hitter?: In the event of someone not being able to complete their gift are you willing to be stand-in writer, artist, or vidder?
Happy holidays! And thanks to the ever-excellent mods over at
sga_santa, from whom the template for this text is snagged with permission.Feel free to snag this Fringe Secret Santa icon. More yet to come...
<||:)>
"A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-23 10:44 pm (UTC)**
There’s a room in the back of her apartment that Olivia has never used.
Well, not used for much – she keeps a card table and folding chairs back there, plus a couple of odds and ends. The Christmas wreath, a large stockpot that doesn’t fit into her kitchen cabinets, even a picnic basket she and Frank bought in a moment of uncharacteristic romanticism and used exactly once. That kind of thing.
It’s too small for any use besides storage, really. It was probably built as a “sun room,” which might have made more sense if direct sunlight ever reached those windows. Olivia never tried to do anything else with it. For long periods of time, she sometimes forgets it’s back there.
Today, though, it nags at her.
Why today? She’s got enough to think about today. The other universe is now bridged with theirs – that other Olivia, the stiff unsmiling one, stood across from her just a few hours ago. The Secretary has them all on high alert. Both the security issues and scientific questions seem likely to keep her busy for the next, oh, rest of her life.
So there’s no real reason for her to be standing in the doorway of her spare room, wondering why she doesn’t use it more often.
It’s as if – as if Olivia can see other possibilities for it now. That wood paneling left over from the 1970s: If she painted it white, it would be bright, even cheery. There would be room for a little rag rug, maybe. And it’s just big enough for – something. A little desk, maybe. An extra chest of drawers.
A crib, something in her mind whispers.
Which is all it takes for her to walk out again, snap off the light and shut the door. Olivia doesn’t listen to that voice any longer.
**
She does, however, tell Lincoln about it.
“Yeah, it would fit,” he says, like it’s no big deal, any other thing she might choose to measure the room by. God, he gets her sometimes. He slouches in the passenger seat, keeps his eyes on the rainswept road before them. “We’re all trying to think about something besides – the others, you know? So don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I’m not beating myself up about it.”
“You have the look. The one that wrinkles your forehead.”
“Shut it.” Thought Olivia can’t help but smile, she isn’t going to let Lincoln joke this away for her. He’s pretty good at that, most of the time; it’s one of the countless things he gives her. But today she needs something else. “I haven’t thought about it in a while, you know?”
“Your back room?”
She takes a deep breath. “No – Rachel. What, ah, happened to her. What it means for me.”
They’ve never actually talked about this, but one thing about all Fringe agents – they’re all terrible snoops. Olivia knows full well that Lincoln has read her whole personnel file, just as she has read his. Neither of them would deny it, nor apologize for it. “Privacy” is a relative concept once you’re in Fringe Division; Olivia’s just glad she doesn’t have to explain this to him now.
Besides, every time she tries to talk in-depth about Rachel, she gets … not like herself.
Lincoln takes that in for a little while as they drive on. Olivia lets him.
It’s weird, how clear the skies are now. How the horizon never shimmers, how GPS never starts recalculating even though you haven’t taken a turn. Their reality has become more stable, Astrid says, and everyone acts like that’s a good thing. Olivia tends to agree. And yet an odd feeling has begun to creep over her, a sense that the world is solidifying around her into a shape she doesn’t recognize or like. The sensation makes her wonder what it’s like to be sealed in Amber, something she has tried very hard not to wonder about.
Finally Lincoln says, “Have you checked into the medical options? Lately, I mean.”
A weird flash passes through her mind of what that might be like: Labs and tests and terror, the idea that it’s all going way too fast. “Nope.”
“You could.” He shrugs. “Just so you’d know.”
“I’m not planning on having a baby. How would I make that work? With my life? Forget it.”
He has been looking at her for a while now, but there’s something between them that makes her head turn just at the moment when this look comes into his eyes – this look that reminds her of the time he got drunk and kissed her before he knew about Frank, the one she tries very hard to defend against but occasionally can’t. This is one of those times where it pierces her to the core. Or maybe it’s just that he says, very softly, “I’d help you.”
“Lincoln.” She wants to crack a joke about how helpless he’d be with a baby, but her voice might shake.
“People make it work. You know?”
“I know. I just – it’s not an option for me.”
“Find out. Make sure.”
“Why would I find out about having a baby if I’m not going to have one?”
He shrugs. “Call it peace of mind.”
“You still believe in that?”
“Peace of mind, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny." This time, when Lincoln grins, she returns it.
They continue wisecracking in this vein for the rest of the drive. Olivia imagines that she is speeding away from that conversation and all the feelings it dredged up – the weird vision of her pregnant self – so she presses down on the accelerator, hard.
**
But when she gets home late that night, head heavy and feet aching, she doesn’t immediately walk into her bedroom to strip down and collapse. Instead Olivia walks to the back room.
She flips on the light and studies it again. It smells slightly musty. The picnic basket lies on one side, lid open, like it’s hungry for sandwiches and champagne and romance, all the things she and Frank thought they were buying. She ought to use the things in here more often. Use the room more often. It seems like it could be so much more.
The room is, indeed, just big enough for a crib. Olivia can almost see it there.
And for a moment, she sees Lincoln standing beside it, a grin on his face, reaching down for a baby – a baby boy so real to her that suddenly she feels as if she knows the weight of him in her arms, the soft scent of his head, the little sounds he makes as he settles down to sleep –
Quickly she turns off the light and shuts the door.
Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-24 01:41 am (UTC)And your Liv/Lincoln -- perfect. Just like that.
Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2012-01-05 05:11 am (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-24 03:48 pm (UTC)The image of the unused back bedroom is perfect, standing in for her unused womb in this verse as well. The stockpot she can't fit into her cupboards because it's too large. The dusty little picnic basket that she and Frank have only used once. Her imagining of what it could be, her feeling that there's an empty space where something used to be. All the little flashes she gets, this one, especially.
A weird flash passes through her mind of what that might be like: Labs and tests and terror, the idea that it’s all going way too fast. “Nope.”
I adore this Lincoln, and the way she knows she can talk to him about everything. They are my favorite doomed ship.
He has been looking at her for a while now, but there’s something between them that makes her head turn just at the moment when this look comes into his eyes – this look that reminds her of the time he got drunk and kissed her before he knew about Frank, the one she tries very hard to defend against but occasionally can’t. This is one of those times where it pierces her to the core. Or maybe it’s just that he says, very softly, “I’d help you.”
This ending is great, too. This Olivia isn't one to dwell. She moves on.
And for a moment, she sees Lincoln standing beside it, a grin on his face, reaching down for a baby – a baby boy so real to her that suddenly she feels as if she knows the weight of him in her arms, the soft scent of his head, the little sounds he makes as he settles down to sleep –
Quickly she turns off the light and shuts the door.
Sob!
Thank you so much for writing this wonderful story for me.
Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2012-01-05 05:15 am (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-24 05:04 pm (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2012-01-05 05:15 am (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-25 01:39 am (UTC)I love the paragraph about how the horizon never shimmers, the GPS, and a world solidifying around her - the comparison to amber - all of which struck that right chord of wonder. It's the little details I'm fond of. Lovely fill.
Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2012-01-05 05:16 am (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2011-12-31 06:12 am (UTC)Re: "A Very Empty Room"
Date: 2012-01-05 05:16 am (UTC)