Comment fic? CHALLENGE: location

[ifeelbetter]

I have of late, the wherefore I know not prelims are evil incarnate lost the ability to write.

In honor of recently passing prelims (YAY!) and nearly dying of the plague the end of a particularly bad bout of flu, I want to do a few comment fics.

YOUR CHALLENGE: Pick a fandom/pairing and a location (the more specific the better). This is, of course, deepsix's bril idea.

MY CHALLENGE: Write a comment fic using that location as the inspiration.

I love location-based fic writing--my Italian art!AU was entirely inspired by the visual of the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. So. You can pick a city, a building, a park, a tree, whatevs--I will write you a fic about/inspired by that place.

You Can't Blame Me For Feeling Amorous verse + Paris for jenna_marianne HERE
Arthur/Eames + the praying hall of the Great Mosque of Córdoba for osaraba HERE
Dom/Cat + a red couch and fluffy curtains at a real place, I'm sure for dancinbutterfly HERE

More to come!

Comments

[ifeelbetter.livejournal.com]

Arthur hadn't had much experience yet--had only turned the law upside-down when dreaming suddenly seemed too wide an experience for the small-mindedness of the army--but even he knew this wasn't how things were supposed to go.

The way things were supposed to go was this: (1) someone hires an extractor, (2) the extractor collects his team, sending them summonses to appear at some abandoned warehouse at an ungodly hour on some obscure date, and (3) they got the damn job done and disappeared. Arthur had known that was how things would go down on his first job, knew it just from the practical simplicity of it.

Of course Eames--who was supposed to be a simple (emphasis on the simple) Forger, no thinking required--would decide to flip the process on its head.

His text was direct at least: Córdoba. Noon. Two days.

No mirage of choice--there never was a choice, Arthur took all jobs and built, brick-by-brick, the mortar of the kind of reputation that would someday buy him Armani suits and the ability to sometimes say No, I think I'll stay in my tropical paradise, thankyouverymuch. And Eames knew it because that's what he was doing and he knew that Arthur knew that. So a location and a date meant a job.

Where in Córdoba? Arthur texted back.

Don't be simple, was Eames's obscure reply.

Which meant that Arthur had to buy a stupid guidebook, had to guess what was so central to this damn city that Eames assumed anyone would know, would walk straight there.

It had been almost too beautiful as Arthur approached the building. Sunlight shouldn't fall like that, tufts of green shouldn't appear in artistic dashes across the water, bridges shouldn't rise up so dramatically but charmingly from the riverbed and the edifices of stone below. It was an absurd place in that it seemed like nothing else could have stood in its spot and the ground itself must have waited for it for millennium.

But that was nothing to the slant of the light inside. The lines, the arcing curves over his head, seemed like buttresses of shadow, bending under and around the sunlight that poured between the pillars. They were like thousands of arced cats, furious or yawning or just holding themselves in curves when the beauty of the place wouldn't allow hard angles.

Arthur felt out of place and completely at home at the same time, in the moment down the sound of his shoes on the marble floor and completely outside of himself.

"I thought you'd like it," Eames said, in step beside Arthur before Arthur had registered his approach.

Arthur stuffed his hands into the pocket of denim jacket--holes in the shoulders, frayed at the cuffs, and everything he knew he'd buy himself out of. He thought about denying it, pretending beauty didn't move him out of his mind and transport the senses. He could mime a business facade if he couldn't feel it.

"I do," he admitted instead.

Eames's grin stretched wider--that was his real one, Arthur realized for the first time and then knew forever after--and he didn't shutter the surprise in his eyes.

He thought I'd lie, Arthur thought, glad he'd surprised them both.

"I thought to myself," Eames said, narrating suddenly, not speaking directly to Arthur, "I thought, 'who does this light remind me of?' You, that's who."

"The light...reminded you of me?" Arthur repeated. He had barely been able to afford the ticket, had used up the ends of the last of his legal backlog to get there.

"Yes," Eames agreed, still grinning. "And it does. Suit you, I mean."

"Ah," Arthur said because it was all he could think of to say.

"And I have a job," Eames added and Arthur felt solid ground beneath his feet again. "Mostly the light, though."

"Ah," Arthur repeated.

It would take him a year to understand the compliment as Eames had intended it.

[osaraba]

Ohhhh, so beautiful. So very, very beautiful. My heart is all aflutter in my chest and all I can think now is-- When I get there. When I finally get there, I'm going to think of this beautiful, tentative, quietly intimate moment of connection. Thank youuuuu! <333

[ifeelbetter.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'm glad you liked it! It's so important to have places in mind for future travel--next on my list is Copenhagen. :)