“Isn’t this nice?” says Aziraphale with badly feigned casualness the next time Crowley stops by for a late night drink.

Crowley is all set to reply, words lined up in his mouth waiting to go, when Aziraphale adds,

“I mean, all of the books and furniture and bottles of wine and things?”


Aziraphale nests. Crowley relearns some crucial facts about angelic courtship rituals.

The Associated Press @AP
Winter Soldier set to stand trial for Washington D.C. massacre and treason apne.ws/1og6SWE

The revelation that Aziraphale might have been in love with him for thousands of years is surprising. The fact that literal books have been written on the subject comes as even more of a shock.

Aziraphale left the shop and promptly tripped over the doorway step, which he hoped was not a bad omen.

The ring sat heavy in his front pant pocket, settled in a little velvet bag.

"You, upstairs," El said to Neal. He beamed, twirled on one foot, and trotted out. "And you need to stop making it so fun to mess with you," she added to Peter.

She surprised a look of such melting fondness on his face as he looked after Neal that her breath caught. "No," he said quietly. "I really don't."

"Oh," Aziraphale says. "I think Crowley might have moved in with me."

“I think I’ve been doing it wrong,” Crowley said. “I mean, it’s nice but it’s not all that.”

“Perhaps you’ve just been doing it with the wrong person,” Aziraphale said archly, and before Crowley could react at all, he had raised his hand to order a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and arrange for another to be sent to a table where a couple had just gotten quietly engaged. He hated showy proposals. Crowley, of course, had invented the flash mob, and then regretted it after he was caught in the middle of one six times in a single day when he was only trying to lounge about London in a decorative fashion.

Aziraphale presses his suit. Crowley mostly has a lot of questions.

"The internet, Aziraphale!" Crowley says. "This is what the internet is for. This is, quite literally, what the internet is for."

"Oh," Aziraphale says, and Crowley knows, he just knows, that Aziraphale is going to say something about how it's jolly useful for hard-to-find first editions and tickets for the Last Night of the Proms.

or, Aziraphale and Crowley find sex confusing.

The Bowerbird wasn't playing fair; Jack couldn't debate these pieces of paper. He couldn't tell pieces of paper and a growing pile of feathers that he, too, remembered the rare treat that was eating a single piece of tropical fruit in the heavy heat of a Christmas afternoon, stickying his best suit of clothes, which had been so clean and pressed for church that morning.

(In which Inspector Jack Robinson is having a fairly uneventful year, divorce notwithstanding, until he acquires a lady doctor for a drinking buddy and receives a series of flirtatious notes from a jewel thief.)

"They don't want it to be real," Laurent says. He touches lightly, with his fingertips, where he's written LOVE WINS. "They want us to sell them a fantasy, and they want just enough reality that they can pretend it might happen to them, one day."

Author's Note: This started life as a series of ficlets on Tumblr, now sewn together to form a full story. Although it is a Bachelor AU, it owes most of its backbone to the show Unreal.

The worst part is Harry’s got no idea why Malfoy keeps sending him invites. He’s never replied to a single one. And if the whole dinner is as exclusive and sought-after as the Prophet keeps breathlessly reporting, then presumably the only reason Malfoy wants him there is in his capacity as the Chosen One. So, really, he can fuck right off.

Harry doesn’t care about Draco Malfoy’s redemption tour. And he’s certainly not going to help him with it.

'You're a wizard, Harry' is easier to hear from a half-giant when you're eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you're seventeen and late for work.

Malfoy Manor has mould, dry rot and an infestation of unusually historical poltergeists. Harry Potter is on the case.

Harry gets de-aged. Malfoy has to help him.

Curses, James and Lily Potter ride again, several Ministry balls, a teenage Summer of Love, a grim young adult dystopian winter, a few different Draco Malfoys, secrets and the problems re: not having any, alternate lives, impossible lives, real lives, allusions to Dirty Dancing, and just because it's not called the Mirror of Erised doesn't mean you shouldn't know better.

Draco found the nest down in the Manor’s cellars, while he was clearing them out.

#

“Is this some sort of mating dance?” he said warily. “Do you need me to find a male snake? Because I’m afraid they’re rather thin on the ground in your size. I suppose we could go to the zoo—”

She flopped her entire body over onto her back and sprawled limp on the floor as though she’d died of sheer irritation. Draco scowled at her. “I have absolutely no idea what you want!”

She flipped back over and came rushing at him, wild enough to make him take an instinctive flinch back, and she spiraled her way rapidly up his leg and round his waist and ended with her face right in front of his and hissed furiously and at length. “I don’t speak snake!” he yelled back at her, and then he paused and said grimly, “Right.”

When Jainan arrived on Iskat to represent his home planet in a diplomatic marriage to Imperial Prince Taam, he was naïve enough to hope the match would work. Taam knew better. Five years later, his confidence shattered, Jainan is released when Taam dies in an accident, only to be faced with another marriage to help salvage his treaty. Jainan understands how the real world works now; but Prince Kiem - the cheerful, scandal-prone darling of the Iskat celebrity magazines - keeps breaking all the rules he's learned.

Over the six years Draco Malfoy has been an Auror, four of his partners have turned up dead. Harry Potter is assigned as his newest partner to investigate just what is going on.

Enjolras nods. This is—not ideal. Grantaire isn’t supposed to be here. Never supposed to be involved in any of this. He isn’t trained for combat or resistance. He untangles curses for god’s sake, working out of the same tiny shop they found him in, and yeah, he has some friends in questionable places—Enjolras and the ABC included—but Grantaire himself is…not questionable. He doesn’t even believe in the revolution, and here he is, rubbing his wrists raw on enchanted handcuffs in a Neo-Death Eater hideaway with blood on his chin.

“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” Grantaire says, in a way that absolutely implies I told you so. Enjolras shoots him a glare, and Grantaire holds up his bound hands. “I’m just not-saying. But I am curious. Do you have a plan?”


In which the Death Eaters are back, Enjolras is doing his best to lead the revolution, Grantaire owns a magical pawn shop, and Veritaserum makes talking about feelings very complicated for everyone involved.

John thinks it might be kind of nice to have music on his Tumblr that plays while people look at pictures of borbs. He can't work out how to do it, though, and yet again winds up writing a text post to ask for help. When he checks on his phone the next morning he has about thirty messages saying things like "NO" and "DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT" and, "OH MY GOD, DID I WAKE UP IN 1998? NO. STOP. WHAT ARE YOU DOING." Someone has attached a gif of Abe Simpson shaking his fist at a cloud.

"Harold, I think I'm being cyberbullied," John says.


In which John acquires a Tumblr, a therapist, and an interest in birdwatching.

"Oh my God," Rodney says, stricken. "This is—this is one of those British costume dramas Ronon always wants to watch and I'm the uncouth American!"

A story about the benefits of cultural exchange, contraception, the downsides to television stardom, and what counts as pre-watershed in the Pegasus galaxy.

A startling confession sends Miles Vorkosigan's life to the left when it might have gone to the right. Miles/Gregor, AU post-Memory.

Enjolras presses his lips together. He already looks pained, and Grantaire hasn't even opened his mouth yet. That's got to be a record, even for them.

"I need a favor," he says at last.

"With what?" says Grantaire. "Ooh, are you forming a cult? Can I join? I'd be awesome at cults, I just know it." He ticks off his qualifications on his fingers. "I love chanting, I look great in robes—"

(High school AU. Grantaire the disaffected stoner is pulled into a cause bigger than himself. Or: in which there are pretend boyfriends for great justice.)

“Did you shoot me?” Phil asks, confused.

“In my own defense, I didn’t notice you standing behind me,” Clint says.

“In my own defense, I was standing behind you.” Phil sits up with a small groan. Clint tries to offer a hand, but gets his arm thumped by the arrow. That’s probably fair. “I’m not up on my archery technique, but doesn’t that mean you’re fantastically bad at this?”

Jack's always been a cautious man, preferring to part with information only when absolutely necessary. Telling unfamiliar people that he can't remember anything beyond a battlefield in France doesn't strike him as necessary, not when he's already begun to piece together the situation for himself. The war is over, and he's returned to his life as a police officer. Apparently whatever case he's working is not going particularly well.

Grantaire moves into an apartment inhabited by a poltergeist. Enjolras haunts him, and Grantaire should really win an award for most complicated relationship status ever.

Toni has spent her entire life hopelessly in love with people.

Elizabeth, in spite of Peter's sentiment, looks wholly satisfied with this answer. "So, you both panicked, and pretended all the way home that the awkward threesome conversation didn't happen," she says. It is definitely not a question.

Peter looks like he'd like to object, so Neal quickly inserts, "Yeah. Pretty much."

“We need you to be married,” Lamarque says.

“Pretend to be married,” Fantine clarifies. “Or pretend to be boyfriends, that’s fine too.”

“It’s the living together that’s important.”

Grantaire swallows. “I beg your pardon?”

---

Or: the one where Enjolras and Grantaire are spies sent to a small village in the south of France to be undercover boyfriends.

Enjolras has not only fake-married an alcoholic annoyance who doesn't take anything he says or does seriously, he somehow did it while Jehan was live-tweeting the civil ceremony. He's fighting for marriage equality, but the evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that marriage as an institution is dead, and that he has personally helped administer its Barthesian coup de grâce.

Cosette is coming to visit. Enjolras needs a fake boyfriend he can date and then break up with, so she'll stop trying to set him up with random guys.

Somehow, he ends up pretending to date Grantaire. It goes better than expected —

Until it doesn't.

Steve Rogers has always known that the supersoldier serum was a gift, and he's never been afraid to do what's right.

When Uncle Sam asks him to unite the two sides of the Cold War by taking part in a symbolic union with a fabled Russian assassin, Captain America doesn't hesitate to do his duty.

Little does he know how thoroughly his world is going to be turned upside down.

Enjolras swallowed. "I didn't know he had tattoos on his back."

"Yeah," said Joly, shrugging. "I mean, he lives with me and before about noon, he's allergic to shirts—"

"Why—" said Enjolras weakly.

"I always figured he had a bad shirt experience," Joly offered. "Shirts killed his family, or his first dog got hit by a truck full of shirts."

Enjolras shook his head. His face was a little flushed.

"Ooh, are you experiencing symptoms?" said Joly, brightening. "What's your pulse doing? Are you breathing normally? How do your glands feel?"

Enjolras was an ice-maiden. Enjolras was a Valkyrie who rode through grey skies and never looked at the ground. She ran Les ABC with an iron fist, but as far as Grantaire knew, she lived like a nun; in a small circle full of incestuous hook-ups and girlfriend-swapping, she was an island without bridges, an ivory tower without a door.

When Clint Barton put on the Captain America costume for a mission, he didn't count on Phil Coulson's reaction. Coulson didn't count on Clint crashing his new team to do something about it.

Enjolras has spent pretty much the entire bus ride to the Musain trying to predict how this will go, but the thing that surprises him isn't that Combeferre isn't the first to notice, or that Joly doesn't start spouting something about infant mortality rates and immediately demand that everybody bathe in Purell. No, what startles Enjolras the most is that he manages approximately half a step through the door into the back room where they all meet before Grantaire rattles his glass down on the table in the back that he's taken for his own and drawls, "Is there something you forgot to tell us, Apollo?"

That silences the room, predictably enough. Everyone breaks off their conversations and swivels to stare at him. At him, and at the baby carrier that he's got hooked over one arm.

Ongoing Modern AU. Enjolras is the leader of les amis, a notorious team of anarchist computer hackers. Grantaire is an artist living in New York City. The prank online dating profile in Enjolras' name is probably Courfeyrac's fault.

The one where Bond really, really isn't used to sleeping with people who don't tragically die soon afterward.

In which Moneypenny despairs of her boys, no one in MI6 is the least bit sane, Bond complains to HR about MI6's workplace policies, Q insists that he is not a fainting maiden, and he might have to sleep with 007.

Strictly for professional purposes, of course.

During an MI6 investigation into black market sales of Ministry of Defence assets, James Bond discovers what he believes to be a human trafficking ring called the Marketplace. He infiltrates the organisation as a buyer, but remains focused on his goal: follow the money trail.

On a private Marketplace cruise, one slave for auction catches Bond by surprise. Q is brilliant, ethereally beautiful, and vulnerable. Bond is instantly drawn to him, and he resolves to take down the Marketplace and rescue Q. What Bond doesn’t realise, though, is that Q is right where he wants to be.
//
The need is simple: Bond wants his body taken care of at work and his soul taken care of at home. But relationships are complicated, even with a contract outlining each party’s role and expectations.

Add in unfamiliar power dynamics, international espionage, an assassin out for revenge, family troubles, and the occasional kitchen fire, and the challenges might be enough to overwhelm even two secret agents and a genius submissive.

“Maybe he’s the kind of straight that doesn’t think it counts when a gay boy sucks him off?” she suggests sotto. He kind of really wants to punch her, but she’s the kind of lady who can crack walnuts with her thighs, so he restrains and feels his entire face go pink instead.

What happens at the North American Lycanthropy and Leadership Symposium stays at the North American Lycanthropy and Leadership Symposium. // Or, Stiles is totally going to be the best fake boyfriend ever. According to Allison and Lydia, he and Scott rate 17/20 in believability and 19/20 in cuteness. They’ve got this shit locked down.

“Bond. How exactly did you involuntarily order a hit on Q?”

“Drinking was involved.”

1. What followed was the most bizarre courtship Q had ever—well, heard of, certainly. He didn’t have much to compare it to, but Moneypenny confirmed that normal people didn’t flirt like this. Not that he was normal. Not that any of them were.

Or: Q has a past, a cat, and a dangerous new boyfriend. Two of these things keep him up nights, the other pees in a box.

2. When Q hears that the FBI is bringing one Neal Caffrey to British soil for an investigation, he's fully expecting trouble with a capital T. Naturally, what he gets is much worse: par for the course when you're dating James Bond and you're old friends with an international art thief.

"I can't believe I'm having sex with you," Derek says, covering his face with a hand, voice weirdly and newly… fond?

Stiles has feelings about this. That is also a new development.

“I propose a formal marriage alliance to bond our two kingdoms together in kinship,” King Stilinski said, well-rehearsed. He indicated Stiles, standing next to him. “I offer to you the hand of my son, crown prince of my kingdom, heir to all my land and holdings. Any child of his body shall stand to inherit your kingdom and mine, and join them in personal union.”

Stiles tried to look regal, yet fertile.

When Clint finds out Phil and Natasha are sleeping together, he is happy for them. Really, he is. After all, he never thought he had a shot with either of them anyway.

“I certainly didn’t suggest anything untoward.” Peter says, honestly perplexed but hiding it by widening his eyes innocently. “I can’t help it if you overreacted to my natural sexual magnetism.”

Despite no one else being affected by an inconvenient magical soulbond, Tasha would later claim to have been summoned to the scene by Clint’s intense distress.

“Hey, Scott, so, I uh, there’s this amazingly hot guy and I’m uh, gonna spend the weekend with him but, you know, just to be careful, I’m sending you his picture, so if by some terrible chance my bloated corpse shows up sometime Monday, just, y’know pass this along to the authorities.” He pauses. “Uh. Kidding?” and then hangs up with a rush of air.

“That is the worst voicemail in the history of voicemails,” Derek says.

“Barton has clearly imprinted on you,” Fury starts, and keeps talking right over Phil’s knee-jerk, horrified, “He has not,” to seal Phil’s doom by saying, “so I’ve decided that you’re going to take primary responsibility for him from now on.”

“Oh, god,” Phil says, faintly, before he can stop himself.

//

In which Clint rejoins SHIELD, has a series of agency-sanctioned adventures, and despairs of ever getting Phil to notice him romantically. He might have known Phil better before he knew so much about him.

"Oh, Agent Dean," he said, sounding bored by the subject. "Yes, yes, I've been gentle as a lamb, I know how you are about him. Although I must say, getting to know him a little better hasn't done a thing to help me understand why that is. Deep underneath all that shallowness, there's a vast, untapped shallowness."

There are variant definitions of wrong, but most people would agree on this one.

It’s always a dance of calculated risks.

“Okay, no,” Pooch says, holding up his hands, “there is no way I’m gambling for money against you and Cougar.”

Jensen frowns, leaning across the table to make wide, concerned eyes at Pooch. “Is it because we’re just that fucking good?” he asks.

“No.” Pooch knocks the edge of the pack once, twice against the table. “It’s because I’m pretty sure you can read each other’s damn minds.”

"So how often have you seen Beca naked?" Jesse asked Chloe, pouring her a beer from the keg. Exhibition was over, his and Beca's duet -- Katy Perry's Firework -- had gotten a standing ovation, and they were standing around in the empty pool celebrating. He was, at least, grinning while he said it, so Chloe wasn't particularly worried.

She grinned back and said, "Not as many times as I'd like."

One hundred days, ten scarves, one Christmas, and Stiles' dormant magic has to ruin everything.

“It depends entirely on how you look at it, I guess,” Stiles shrugs. “On the one hand, instant healing and the apparently inherited ability to pull off leather at all times. On the other, serious attitude problems and a suspicious disappearance of eyebrows.”

“Even Derek’s?” Danny snorts, “that’s a lot of eyebrow to lose.”

“I know,” Stiles agrees. “You should see, it’s so weird. Every time I want to ask him where they go, except he’d totally eat my face off.”

“There are worse ways to die.”

The first time he felt Lydia’s soul, it felt like a sneeze.

Derek has a problem. Stiles is a solution.

So far, college has taught Stiles three things:
1) Eight am classes are cruel and unusual and should be avoided at all costs, even if it means having to enroll in something truly hideous instead, like Econ 101.
2) Dorm security is just as tight as Stiles’ orientation leader had promised it would be, and the dude guarding Scott’s dorm in particular does not respond well to bribes.
3) Mrs. McCall clearly had no clue what she was talking about when she’d insisted that Scott and Stiles needed to branch out and room with strangers, so it’s all her fault that Scott ended up with a total dick of a roommate and Stiles got stuck all the way across campus with some guy who has a girlfriend two towns over and is thus never around.

Or, the one where pledge brothers Stiles and Scott start a prank war with Derek Hale's fraternity.

The one where Derek is like a box of Kix (or something).

Antonia Carter Stark takes no shit and no prisoners.

Ten years clean of Neptune living, Logan's past finds him in an all-night grocery store.

The alpha pack was nothing like what Derek expected.

First of all, they had zero interest in fighting Derek for his territory. "I have an infinity pool," Brandon said loftily. "You basically haunt this busted up house and live in an abandoned train car."

Stiles takes up knitting. (also magic, but not on purpose.)

"So you decided hepatitis would be fun"; or the one about tattoos, waffles and ghouls.

Derek Hale fails at everything.

Summer Camp AU! In which Derek is the Hot Camp Counselor and Stiles is the Awkward Camper who lusts after him from afar.

Back when Stiles was in high school Beacon Hills didn't have a crime lab, because they simply didn't need one. Those were the days.

When Stiles had left Beacon Hills, he'd done it with every intention of never coming back. Ten years later, he finds himself forced back to his hometown. Of course, it's not long before things are just as they had been before -- that is, falling headlong towards disaster, and this time, stopping it isn't really an option.

In which some witches swap out some pretty important parts on Stiles for new ones, Stiles takes it in stride because things like this happen (right?), this is his life now, supernatural shit all over the place, but Derek definitely does not take in it stride.

"Today is Scott's first day of kindergarten and Derek is terrified."

Then there's a period of time where Derek tries to aggressively date Stiles just because while Stiles is blatantly uncooperative.