Catch Up

Remember the tale of the spectacular computer crash?

Sometime this month, I intend to finish my last two December fics and tigriswolf's Ella Enchanted AU (on today's docket) and a certain remix/WIP bang (collab). They all got put off in light of the spectacular, ill-timed crash + Yuletide (in the case of the first missed December fic).

Gifts Received and Given

So I excluded my beautiful gift from the Yuletide retrospective post because the post was huge and I didn't want this to get lost.

Tonight's Not Long Enough (2740 words) by DWEmma
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Nashville (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Scarlett O'Connor/Liam McGuinnis
Characters: Scarlett O'Connor, Liam McGuinnis
Summary:

Liam, experiencing jetlag in the middle of the night while coming to work with a new band, notices a google alert for a video of Scarlett taking the stage at Winterfest. And he never did get around to getting rid of her phone number.

My review, because it covers what I felt about this fic better than I can reword:

I feel like nothing I could say would do justice to this piece. My first reaction was wow, it's up to the current canon, it fits where we're at, it's real, it's plausible, and more, it's soooo Liam. You captured his voice perfectly. I can hear his denial even when he doesn't admit it and then the stuff he's honest about, his coping mechanisms hiding problematic feelings away where they don't hurt as he drowned it all in work and busyness, then Scarlett. It was her voice too. She sounded just like herself coming off that high and faced with someone unexpected with all this hope for the future in that one little stated open doorway.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love this fic. I love this pairing and how well you snuck this into canon in the future, where they could go from here.

Thank you so, so much!

In addition to Yuletide, I participated in the Be Compromised Secret Santa for the Clint/Natasha pairing. I received a beautiful gift from geckoholic and wrote a gift for krilymcc.

The Company You Keep (8677 words) by geckoholic
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson
Additional Tags: Friends With Benefits, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers
Summary:

The first time doesn't really count for either of them. They don't glorify it in hindsight or put more into it than what it was: playing with fire, slowly dragging your hand over a flame you know could burn you alive.

Clint and Natasha get to know each other in the biblical sense the first time they meet and don’t catch feelings until later.

This fic, this fic. I don't know how to be articulate about it, but I shall try. This is a fic that counts up the beats of a relationship by milestones real and expected and notes the differences between the two. There's transitions with adorable sidenotes of outsider POV and how Natasha tells the story (truthfully and otherwise) and how Clint does (the same), and it's hot and sweet and lovely and deep and go read it.

Burn With Me Tonight (7074 words) by scribblemyname
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Kate Bishop, Lucky (Hawkeye)
Additional Tags: Community: be_compromised, Secret Santa, Babyfic, Pregnancy, Recruitment, Marriage of Convenience, Adoption, Spies & Secret Agents, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD, Girltalk, Slow Build, Romance, Developing trust, He Made Another Call
Summary:

He demanded leverage. She gave it. She let him claim her and her child legally in the form of marriage and adoption papers. That was the bargain - not affection.

My fic for the Secret Santa did not come easily, but when it did come, I saw I was going to run waaaay over when I was still about 4K in and did what I had to in order to rein it in before disaster. Did not help I was writing through the night on the literal last day before an auto-default. I'm going to have to come back to this one. I got it to a stopping point but I really can't say I finished what I wanted to say.

So it's a baby fic, but it's not fluffy, it's only mildly domestic; it's really about a skittish untrusting marriage of convenience between Hawkeye and the Black Widow because he won't kill her unborn child (SHIELD orders aside) and so recruitment's the only option left. Do you know how hard it was to make this premise believable? But it got inside my head and wouldn't let go, so I had to.

Could not have happened without shenshen77 and in_the_blue. They are awesome.