het_reccers | Various Fandoms: Downton Abbey, Fringe, Iron Man, Merlin, Bones (Reply)

Ah, here is the last of my special recs for August. I apologize for the lateness and cut it down to 21 but tried to keep a variety of fandoms and ships at least. I'm glad I got to share some of my favorites!

Fandom Category: Downton Abbey
Pairing: Mary Crawley/Matthew Crawley
Fic Title: You & Me of the 10,000 Wars
Author: allthingsholy
Link: http://allthingsholy.livejournal.com/158762.html
Rating/Warning(s): PG-13 (R in later chapters)
Genre: Drama, Romance
WIP?: Yes

Special Rec: 16/21

Why This Must Be Read: This is a modern AU where Downton Abbey becomes Downton Industries. There are only two chapters thus far (out of a projected four), but I’m already completely taken by this author’s absolutely brilliant characterization of Mary -- a woman who can play the part of the perfect, proper eldest daughter to the tee when needed but also rejects the role, a woman who in one sense loves the glamour of the lifestyle she leads even as she cannot bear its superficiality. Everyone else is also thoughtfully portrayed, and the writer has creatively and smoothly adapted Downton Abbey to the 21^st century.

Matthew spends the meeting thinking about Robert and the strange edge in his voice, about Mary Crawley’s flat smile trapped on the wall in her father’s office. When he gets back to his desk, he hesitates for a reasonable minute before he clicks on his computer and types “Mary Crawley” into the search bar of his web browser. The results that come up are mixed, but third from the top is a spread from a fashion show, complete with pictures and a small blurb underneath. Mary Crawley, daughter of business tycoon Robert Crawley, walks the catwalk for the Napier collection wearing a sapphire evening gown. Her face is unsmiling and her features schooled into what he imagines is a perfect catwalk look, but it doesn’t sit much more naturally on her face than the smile in the photo on Robert’s wall. Both look like window dressing; neither reaches her eyes. Matthew spends longer than he’d like to admit staring at the photo and wondering exactly how painful the charity dinner is going to be, and whether or not the tight knot that’s settled into the pit of his stomach is dread or something else, something warmer and harder to name.

Fandom Category: Fringe
Pairing: Olivia Dunham/Peter Bishop
Fic Title: Quantum Entanglement
Author: rainer76
Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/363090
Rating/Warning(s): PG-13
Genre: Drama, Romance
WIP?: No

Special Rec: 17/21

Why This Must Be Read: Everything this author writes is bound to be fantastic but this work of hers in particular is just pure and utter genius. The best thing about her writing is just how Fringe-y it all is. The Peter and Olivia romance is as substantial and real as it is on the show, but it’s intertwined into the fabric of some really smart science fiction and whimsical flights of fantasy. You’ll particularly want to read this for the wonderfully creative way she weaves together the events of S3 and S4 with how both of them individually try to find their way to each other, to find their way home.

Peter pushes upright onto his elbows and regards the cylinder warily.

It was her, his Olivia, lost and brainwashed into believing all the wrong things. Peter’s seen the reports, hacked the computers in those dark months when Olivia wouldn’t speak to him. He knows the broad-strokes of what was done to her, of the alienation and fear that drove her to keep running, striving to find a way home.

You were the only thing that got me through, she had whispered, pale, half awake on a hospital bed, before she knew the ugly truth. He wasn’t. Olivia got herself through it because no one else was going to save her.

Peter was sleeping with her doppelganger and making house, thinking about small steps that would lead to big steps, of breakfast in bed, Sunday cross-words, of laughter and sleepy sex, of waking up each morning with her scent on his skin.

Fandom Category: Fringe
Pairing: Olivia Dunham/Peter Bishop
Fic Title: Never Goes out of Style
Author: Della19
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5716154/1/Never_Goes_out_of_Style
Rating/Warning(s): T
Genre: Romance, Humor
WIP?: No

Special Rec: 18/21

Why This Must Be Read: This writer takes Walter’s mention of the purple tuxedo and turns it into an incredibly humorous but somehow pretty startlingly realistic encounter between Peter and Olivia. It is surprisingly sweet and funny and downright perfect in the best possible way.

After a few minutes Peter finally bites the bullet and decides he might as well man up and face the music (although he'd rather go up against that monster that impregnated Agent Francis again than breach this particular subject) and when he notices Olivia's eyes on him he shrugs his shoulders towards the suit and brings one of his arms up to brush agitatedly through his hair before he finally says, the words spilling out rapidly,

"My father has this dream that I'll get married in his old suit and that the woman that I marry will call him dad and he's apparently decided that out of the two woman that I converse with on a daily basis, you're the best candidate for the position,"

There's a second of silence after he's spoken, where Olivia just looks at him with this indescribable look on her face and at that look Peter pauses and looks over what he's said, and once he (rather abruptly) realises that it sounded vaguely insulting, drops his arm to his side and turns father towards her and hurries to correct what he's said…

Fandom Category: Iron Man
Pairing: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fic Title: The Wager
Author: outtabreath
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5942578/1/The_Wager
Rating/Warning(s): T
Genre: Romance, Humor
WIP?: No

Special Rec: 19/21

Why This Must Be Read: An absolutely flirty, hysterical, sexy, and sweet fic that involves a wager between Pepper and Tony that leads to an important shift in their relationship. The characterizations are so spot-on and the banter astoundingly witty. One of the first Pepper/Tony fics I read and one of my favorites.

I frowned at him. "Tony, I tell you what you need to do, not the other way around."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that, Pepper – but I need to discuss a very important matter with you. A very important and delicate matter."

My mind started to boggle as I ran through the possibilities: He'd gotten married while he was drunk; he'd married Rhodey while he was drunk; one of his numerous conquests had made him a daddy; one of the bots had made him a daddy; he'd finally starred in a movie with Jenna Jameson like he'd been threatening to for years; he'd taken out an immensely old and important monument while in the suit.

I steeled myself. Whatever it was, I could spin it. Then I'd proceed to make his life miserable for the next six months. Ten if it was porn-related.

"What is it, Tony?" I asked in my very best assistant's voice. My fingers poised over the keyboard, ready to take notes.

"People have noticed, Pepper," he began.

"What? That you fly around in a big metal suit?" I asked. "That would be because you told them you fly around in a big metal suit."

"No," he said, very seriously. "That you can't stop devouring me with your eyes."

Fandom Category: Merlin
Pairing: Morgana/Arthur Pendragon
Fic Title: Five Visions Morgana Had That Changed Camelot
Author: hariboo
Link: http://hariboo.livejournal.com/161868.html
Rating/Warning(s): R
Genre: Drama, Romance
WIP?: No

Special Rec: 20/21

Why This Must Be Read: This writer has such a strong voice for Morgana, and does a brilliant job of blurring the line between her visions and reality as well as portraying the Morgana/Arthur relationship in a way that really resounds with the mythology of the show and Arthurian legend in general.

Arthur, at this throne, his crown gleaming and a beard heavy on his face. Standing in front of him and she cannot help but think how handsome he truly is. Strong and regal, with a lighter air than his father had. She has no doubt that his people love him. Morgana smiles.

He smiles back (to her or to whoever it is that he is seeing in her place, but it does not matter. She forgets how fond she is of his smile until she sees it.) and reaches out to her.

It’s a surprise comes when she feels her hand raise at the touch of his. Blinking, she watches as Arthur takes their joined hands and kisses her knuckles, a smirk present on his feature.

Morgana feels flushed all over, stepping—

Fandom Category: Bones
Pairing: Temperance Brennan/Seeley Booth
Fic Title: Two Strings, One Knot
Author: drphungus
Link: http://escape-speed.livejournal.com/6927.html
Rating/Warning(s): R
Genre: Drama, Romance
WIP?: No

Special Rec: 21/21

Why This Must Be Read: This is a slight AU of the episode where Booth and Brennan go undercover at her high school reunion and he pretends to be her husband. Her characterizations of both are right on the mark, but her Brennan voice is particularly strong in this. There’s a wistfulness, a blurring of what is and what could be and what they pretend to be and what they both want their relationship to be, that is just staggeringly illustrated.

He places the wedding band on her nightstand and asks her questions about her former classmates.

“Do you remember if Evelyn had any enemies?” He says nothing about the rings. It’s not like him to not comment or make a joke. But he is a man who believes in symbols and gestures. Opening a door is not just opening a door. Nor is closing it. But she doesn’t look at the world in metaphor.

She wonders why he didn’t just place it in her hand.