Fringe Exchange Gifts!
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fringe_exchangeIf you don't have a sock to post to the comm, post your Fringe Exchange gift in the comments! A joyous Fringe Exchange to you all!
Please put the recipient's name in the comment title: Gift for: FringeFanatic7831.
If you use something that approximates this format in the body of the post, it would make my heart glad.
Title:
Author: Anonymous
Recipient:
Warnings: (if any)
Everything else (word count, summary, author's note, characters, etc.) is optional.
Comments will be unscreened as soon as everyone has a gift ready to reveal.
Please put the recipient's name in the comment title: Gift for: FringeFanatic7831.
If you use something that approximates this format in the body of the post, it would make my heart glad.
Title:
Author: Anonymous
Recipient:
Warnings: (if any)
Everything else (word count, summary, author's note, characters, etc.) is optional.
Comments will be unscreened as soon as everyone has a gift ready to reveal.
Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-05 02:49 am (UTC)Title: Incompatible Realities
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: Wikiaddicted723
Warnings: Offscreen major character death
Rating: T for implied sexual content
Word count: 1,991
Characters: Charlie Francis, Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, Philip Broyles, Astrid Farnsworth, Sonia Francis (mentioned), Walter Bishop (mentioned), John Scott (mentioned), Lincoln Lee (mentioned)
Summary: Charlie, Liv, their Jaegar, and a kaiju called Knifehead.
Charlie hit the ground with a groan and lay there for a minute, just swearing under his breath.
“I understand that the kaiju don’t keep office hours,” he complained to the world at large, “but why the hell do they always come up at ass o’clock in the morning? Why can’t they wait until after brunch?”
Liv was probably up and at ‘em, doing star jumps as a warm up before going for a five mile run in the time it took him to stand up, pull on some pants, and get to the bay. Charlie admired it about her - she was like one of those little ballerinas in a music box, always wound up and ready to dance no matter what damn time the alert sirens started screaming. Charlie always seemed to be either five-miles deep in a dream or… Something else deep in Sonia, but Liv? Liv was never caught off guard. Sometimes, he wondered how in the world they were Drift compatible, but he figured they probably balanced one another or something.
Well, no, he knew why they were Drift compatible. Even before they’d been hooked up to one another’s brains, they’d worked well together, and they had a freaky level of synch on the mat. If Charlie had had his way, Liv would have been his best man when him and Sonia got married, but that wasn’t the Done Thing, so he’d ended up with John, and Liv had been Sonia’s bridesmaid, and they’d had one hell of a party.
He managed to lift his head off the floor, and sure enough, there was Liv, doing frickin’ star-jumps. She was like the goddamn Energiser bunny - nothing ever seemed to hit her, not the fact that they’d just been woken up after three hours sleep, not the seventeen hour day they’d put in yesterday, not all that goddamn running she did, around the ‘dome with John, and Peter, and Astrid from K-Science. Not even not getting to hook up with her super-secret boyfriend phased her, which Charlie had to admit, he kind of admired. If he had a super-secret girlfriend he saw as little as Liv saw her fancy man, he’d have cracked up. He was just lucky that Sonia lived on base, too, and that married couples were allowed to spend time being… Married. They’d fought a war for those conjugal visits for the pilots, and Charlie was glad they had. He didn’t know if he would have ever been able to ask Liv to stay away for a night so he could get freaky with his wife. He didn’t know that he’d’ve been able to look Liv in the face after asking her to let him make use of her safer, more stable lower bunk.
Man, he really would crack up if he had to sneak around to be with Sonia the way Liv had to sneak around to be with John. Not that Charlie knew anything about Liv and John. Relationships between pilots from different teams were discouraged - honestly, relationships at all were kind of discouraged, unless they were between co-pilots, if only because the PPDC didn’t much want to have to pay out huge life assurance packages to the families of the pilots who died in action. Liv and John were damn good at their jobs - that made it almost worse that they were flouting unofficial protocol, because that meant that they were too valuable to lose. Charlie knew that the Marshal didn’t know about John and Liv because John and Lincoln were still being sent out with him and Liv. If Broyles knew, he’d never run the risk of Liv or John moving to protect one another instead of putting the kaiju down.
But no, Charlie knew nothing about Liv and John fucking like bunnies whenever the Marshal’s back was turned. Pinky promise.
“Come on, old man,” Liv said, breaking him out of his pleasant, sleepy musings by dumping clean clothes on top of him and kicking his boots across the room. “We’ve got a monster to fight.”
Maybe the best thing about being Liv’s co-pilot was that even if they hadn’t been Drift compatible, they would have been friends.
There weren’t too many teams who weren’t either married, like Charlie’s favourite Russians, the Kaidonovskys, or family, like the Hansens outta Sydney who, while assholes, were damn good at their jobs, so some people kind of assumed him and Liv had a little something going on on the side - hell, it wouldn’t have been hard, considering they had to share a set of bunk beds in their own little room, and they’d been a team longer than Charlie’d been with Sonia - but the idea of sleeping with Liv was… Well, it was just weird. Charlie’d rather sleep with Broyles than share a bed with Liv for anything other than warmth.
Oh, hell. He’d figured out about John and Liv at his and Sonia’s wedding - was that when they hooked up the first time? Those assholes, using Charlie’s wedding as an excuse to break the rules.
“Hey, Charlie?” Liv said, her voice crackling across the comms. “You know how when we’re piloting, we’re in each other’s heads?”
He had kind of forgotten - not completely, of course, you never could, but Drifting with Liv was so much of a habit that sometimes, Charlie forgot that the little voice in the back of his head was a different person. His thoughts maybe got away from him a little, but hey, he know one hell of a lot more about John Scott’s anatomy than he ever could have wanted, thanks to Liv’s runaway thoughts.
“You’re not my type either,” she assured him, her mind shimmering with amusement in the back of his head. “Trust me, Charlie, I don’t go for married, or shorter than me, or-”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Stop before you hurt my feelings, Liv, I'm a sensitive guy - you don't wanna hurt me, do you?"
“She's trying to reassure Sonia, Francis,” Peter’s voice came from way back in the ‘dome. “Isn’t your lovely wife’s peace of mind worth a little ribbing?”
“Funny thing about that, Bishop,” Charlie called back. “I don’t remember how you became an authority on marriage - was it that time you forged a marriage licence to get Liv out of Dubai?”
“Eyes on the prize, big guy,” Peter said, and Charlie couldn’t help but laugh - it wasn’t often Peter came so close to admitting defeat. “Figuring out Dunham’s place in your marriage can wait.”
“Hey, Bishop?”
“Yeah, Francis?”
“Hey, fuck you, man.”
Peter just laughed, but so did Liv, so that was fine.
Having a good team behind them meant him and Liv could focus on the kaiju when they were out at sea - Sonia as head engineer, Peter on the comms, Walter and Astrid in K-Science, John and Lincoln and their team - but even with that confidence, everyone clenched up when Peter announced Marshal on deck. Broyles was a hard-ass, but he knew his stuff. Him and Nina Sharp had been gods in their day, and even now, he was a legend, and legends got respect even from a disrespectful asshole genius like Peter Bishop.
“We’ve got a Cat Four coming in fast from the north east,” Broyles said. “It hasn’t surfaced yet, but going on the sonar, it looks all tail and crest - try and catch it from a distance, don’t get too close.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie and Liv said together, and Charlie figured that if there was video, it’d catch him and Liv rolling their eyes together, too. At least Broyles hadn’t-
“And less of the cussing while on duty, Francis.”
Yup, there it was. Sorry, Dad.
“What’re we calling this bad boy?” Liv asked, switching to their fog lights. “You’ve got a knack for these things, Peter - what’s mine and Charlie’s fifth drop gonna be called?”
“How does Knifehead sound, Olivia?”
Olivia stayed behind Broyles as he sloshed through the rain to get to the ‘dome. He cut a dash, she had to say, in his long coat and those boots.
Liv wondered if he’d changed at all since last she’d set foot in a shatterdome. She figured it’d be easier to tell if he didn’t have his head shaved - and clenched her fist. She’d never been in a ‘dome without Charlie before, and it felt like she’d forgotten an arm and a leg when she left the lab back in Anchorage to come here. It felt too big and too hollow and too quiet, even though she could barely hear the Marshal speak over the whir of the chopper blades and the bustle of activity on the landing platform. Two or three other birds, military grade, big ones, had come in around the same time as theirs, and Liv’s stomach dropped when she saw Walter shouting and waving at some poor porter, who was just there to transport his specimens.
“Good to see some things never change,” she called, gesturing towards Walter and someone that had to be Astrid. Liv had missed Astrid, really - it had been Astrid who’d hunted her down and let her know about John’s death, John’s and Lincoln’s - and thought that maybe it’d be nice to see her, at least. It would be uncomfortable to see Walter, who’d always looked a little too hard at Liv, and she had never quite known what to make of Marshal Broyles, but Astrid, yeah, she was looking forward to seeing Astrid again.
Broyles took an umbrella from a tall, skinny guy with hair something the same colour as Liv’s own and handed it to her, then motioned for her to lead on - or follow on, since Walter and Astrid were right ahead of them, she guessed. When she looked back, the blonde guy was gone, but Broyles had his own umbrella up, and he was watching her expectantly.
Liv shrugged her duffle higher up her shoulder, and followed behind K-Science’s tanks.
Seeing Peter again had been a shock - he’d been the last thing she heard in the conn pod that morning, before she blacked out, Olivia, Olivia, are you still there? Can you hear me Olivia? Olivia, do you copy? - but it had been good, too, kind of. He looked the same, more or less, from the weird kaiju-blue sheen under the skin of his throat because of the experiments Walter did on him as a kid to the rough skin of his jaw against the side of her neck when he hugged her, because he never bothered shaving unless he was going somewhere with a formal dress code.
Seeing Walter hadn’t been as good - he’d talked about the mechanics of dredging the sea to find Charlie’s body, and hadn’t stopped until Astrid, who had been wonderful to see again, whacked him on the chest with a three-inch-thick file stained in some kind of blueish goop.
“Sonia retired after Charlie died,” Astrid explained. “She has a kid now, born six months after Knifehead - Chaz. Charles Francis Junior. His middle name is Oliver.”
“You’re gonna be piloting with one of these men,” Broyles said, leading her into the gym. It was all laid out, mats and a selection of non-lethal weapons, and a bunch of muscle-bound goons who’d probably tested out of the Academy.
And that one skinny guy with hair the same colour as Liv’s own.
“Him,” she said, nodding to the guy. “Who’s he?”
“Name’s Nick Lane,” Broyles said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Tested way above average in the Academy, can’t find anyone compatible with him.”
Liv looked across the room, eyed all her potential co-pilots, and nodded once.
“I think he just found someone,” she said, kicking off her boots and stepping onto the mat. “You, Nick Lane - wanna dance?”
Re: Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-06 05:58 am (UTC)1. CHAAAAAAAARRRLIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!! (and Lincoln!)
2. OOoooohhhh, Walter doing experiments with Kaiju blood!!!!!
3. This is maybe going to sound rude (but I love it, don't doubt that I do, I'm just being an ass); WHERE IS THE REST?
Re: Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-06 10:06 am (UTC)I'm so glad you liked it, though!
Re: Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-06 10:34 am (UTC)Re: Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-07 02:06 pm (UTC)Re: Gift for Wikiaddicted723
Date: 2014-12-14 03:22 pm (UTC)