WIPs Meme
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Contents of my G-docs WIPs. This omits the things I have written in notepads, because that way lies madness.
WIPs
Filename: Vadderung/Harry
I reached the dias, bobbed down on one knee for all of a fraction of a second, and then sprang back up to stand at the side of Maeve’s throne, looking down at her smiling upturned face. “What the fuck, my lady?”
Maeve broke off her song, and blinked up at me with a slow smiled. “Harry,” she said, delight thick in her words. “You’ve picked up a patron. Aren’t you a clever Knight?”
“I can tie my own breeches and everything,” I said. I held my right hand over her, senses extended, but whatever influence might be exerting itself was eclipsed by the sharp ozone tang of Winter’s power, calling to the Mantle that bound me. “What the hell does a Faerie Queen have to drink to get wasted? Turbo-Absinthe?”
“A token of appreciation,” she murmured, one hand trailing down to the floor beside her throne before holding a horn out to me. By rights, it should have been empty after being wrong side up on the floor. Instead, it was brimful of golden liquid. “Try a little, Knight.” I accepted the horn from her but didn’t drink. I sniffed it instead, and it felt like I’d been punched in the face by a fist full of honey.
Mead.
Oh.
Add that together with the suddenly garrulous court, and there was one obvious conclusion.
Filename: Don’t Blink Chap 1
Sometimes I chanced the lifts in John’s residences, when I was by myself. With Hendricks it was always the stairs. He steadfastly refused to get in little metal boxes with me when getting out of them depended on me not frying the circuitry. Like I said, no fun at all.
There were a lot of stairs. My ankle throbbed, my rest of me ached. “Hey,” I said, as my ankle protested the beginning of yet another flight, “I thought it was the fifth floor in this building?”
“Seventh, this month. Boss told you last week.” Last week? I hadn’t seen him last... oh yeah. I’d thought he’d meant the seventh floor of the building he owned on [STREET NAME] though.
I just about made it without denting my pride. If it’d been the eighth floor, I might have abandoned my quest and settled in for a nap in the stairwell. Hendricks punched a code into a numberpad that I stood well back from, and then led the way down the corridor to pound on what must have been John’s apartment door. It swung open after a couple of seconds, and there he was. John. He was in sweats and a t-shirt, which was sleepwear for him, but he didn’t look like we’d woken him. He must have been waiting up for me. Oops.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at home, Mr Hendricks?” John asked, as if I wasn’t leaning against the wall directly opposite him. His hair had that soft and messy look I only got to see late at night and early in the mornings. I clamped down on a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets so I could resist the temptation to reach over and pet him.
“Boss,” Hendricks said, which could mean pretty much anything between the two of them. I was familiar with a couple of the most frequent uses ( 1. ‘I think this is a terrible idea’ 2. ‘I’ve got your back’), but this was the prologue to one of their silent discussions. It was conducted entirely in subtle facial expressions and was completely unintelligible to the innocent bystander. In this case, me. Beginning to feel ignored, I crossed my arms over my chest and winced when it spread the viscous ichor around. Ugh.
My wince must have caught Marcone’s attention, because he stopped and looked at me expectantly. “Oh, hi honey, how was your day?” I asked, and then proceeded as if he'd had time to answer and ask a question of his own. “It’s sweet of you to worry, but this blood isn’t mine.”
“I hope not, Mr. Dresden. It’s blue.”
John made a valid point.
Still, a guy can sulk when he has to expend serious effort persuading his boyfriend’s henchman not to shang hai him to the hospital and his actual boyfriend doesn’t seem to notice. Except then John redeemed himself by saying, “The water’s hot, if you’d like to step inside.” Stars, a shower. I had ichor in my hair.
The pair of them leaned away from me as I limped through the door. Charming. I’d have been offended, but I couldn’t spare the energy. I was going to need it if I wanted to be able peel myself out of my clothes. I’m never ever exploding a demon, ever again. Next time I’ll just let it bite my face off.
Filename: Authority!Figure-OriginalLuccio
“You saved my life tonight,” Luccio said calmly, sitting down as she dropped a bottle of ale on the table in front of me, “and disproved several of my preconceptions about you.”
“Oh yeah? So you *don’t* think I’m an evil mastermind? Morgan seemed pretty ‘die warlock die’ about the necromancy.”
“Donald is set in his ways, and for good reason. You, Dresden. You are decidedly more...flexible.” She took a long drink from her own bottle, draining it down before slamming it back onto the table. I’m pretty sure it was theatrics. She was trying to distract from the half smile that had been trying to work it’s way onto her scarred face.
“You bet. You should see me dancing the Can Can.”
She snorted and then pushed her chair back, shaking her head. “A pity,” she murmured.
“What is?” We’d come out of it pretty well tonight, I thought.
“How terribly young you are,” she replied. “I’m rather tense after that duel, and the most appealing candidate for a bed partner would make me feel like a cradle snatcher.”
I froze, bottle half way to my mouth. “I...wait, me?” I asked in astonishment. I don’t know what surprised me more, that she thought I was appealing, or that she’d find anyone appealing. She was kind of, uh. Mature. I hastily tried to wipe any traces of those thoughts from my face.
Luccio sighed. “There we are. You have all the social graces of a giant lumbering puppy.” She looked me up and down in an assessing manner. “Perhaps I’ll buy you dinner, a few decades from now. If you make it to maturity without dying in an interesting fashion.” She turned back to the room, where the Wardens under her command were doing their best to drink Mac’s dry of Ale. It was spectacularly after closing time, but apparently he’s willing to risk trouble with the city council for an averted apocalypse. I’d remember that for next time .“Have a good evening everyone.” She got several respectful nods and a couple of good nights, and then strode from the room, cloak flowing behind her in what I had to admit was a pretty kick ass fashion. I couldn't manage that without some helpful pathetic fallacy from a passing breeze.
Abandoned things that I doubt will get written:
Filename: Control (...this has no bearing on what’s actually inside it)
The next time we met, we got stuck inside a closet I’d hastily warded, squeezed in between boxes of god knows what, pressed up close against one another as I tried to get my pentacle off and lit up to weave a useful charm.
“Stop that,” John growled into my face.
“Stop what?” I grunted, trying to retrieve one of my arms from between his shoulder and the wall of the closet, accidentally pulling him tighter against me in the process
“Writhing, you bastard.”
“I’m not...” my brain caught up with my movements, and reminded me that maybe dry humping my best friend wasn’t a brilliant idea, considering his longstanding crush on me and iron clad refusal to acknowledge it. Helpfully, I snickered.
“Dresden, if you even think about making a fucking in the closet pun, I will cut you.”
“I’m not sure I’m up for knife play on the first date, John,” I said, successfully retrieving my arm and then squeezing it between us to get at my amulet. The action pushed his torso back from me a little, and probably bent him backwards at an uncomfortable angle over a box. Which had the unintended side effect of bringing his hips in alignment with mine. Oh.
“Fucking bastard. Fucking drop you off a goddamn pier, you fucking- “
“Did you leave the Gentleman in your other suit, John?” I asked. He dropped his head onto my shoulder and snarled out his frustration. I wiggled around a bit more and managed to pat him on the back.
“Yeah. Along with my self control, apparently. Sorry. Take it as a compliment?”
“It’s a very large compliment,” I said, somehow managing not to laugh.
Filename: Harry/omc
It was 10 in the morning, and I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to be in Mac’s. I was only there myself to pick up an order. It was too early to sit down for a drink. I ’m not an alcoholic. Despite my hardboiled detective noir image, I can’t actually pull off hard-drinking. I was there to pick up some beers for later that evening.
So the well-groomed dark haired guy perched agilely on one of the barstools kind of took me by surprise. I was even more shocked by the way he was intently chattering away to Mac. It’s like chattering to one of the 13 pillars holding up the roof. Most people give up when they don’t get a response.
“And I think Charlotte was more broken up about it than I was. Nine years old. You know she was born three months after I got with Ricky? He’s her favourite uncle. And he still sent her a birthday present last week. Makes it difficult to have a proper hate-on and get over him. Nine years. Christ. I need a distraction.”
Mac grunted, and then nodded in my direction.
Loquacious-apparently-recently-dumped-by-his-distressingly-decent-boyfriend guy turned to look. And then he tilted his head.
“Huh. Tall, dark and handsome. Yeah, that’ll do. Can I buy you a drink?”
I think that’s some kind of land speed record for time between entering a bar and getting hit on. I blinked.
“Friend of yours, Mac?” Call me paranoid, but people taking an interest in me out of the blue unnerves me. But Mac grunted and nodded.
“Oh, sorry, manners! I’m not usually this forward, actually. I’m Luke Shaw, pleased to meet you. Mac’s known my dad since forever.”
Forever had the potential to be a lot closer to literal among my acquaintances, so I held out a hand to shake his in a test.
“Harry Dresden.” I said, carefully watching him. No zap of power. He felt mortal.
“So, would you like that drink, Harry?” It was a brief, strong handshake, though his fingers brushed against my palm a little longer than necessary as he broke away. I raised an eyebrow. “Damn. I’m not your type?”
“Not exactly. You’re kind of disadvantaged by the whole guy thing you have going for you.”
He grinned. “But that was a gentle put down, for a straight guy. Sweet. Let me buy you an entirely platonic coke in exchange for the pleasure of your platonic company? I’m moving back to Chicago and wow, this place isn’t what it used to be.”
Filename: Somebodyplaysthem
I had no coat. My rings and staff and rod and pentacle were missing and weirdly, so were my boots. Looking at my socks made me feel strangely vulnerable. As fake kidnappings go, this was pretty damn thorough. My hands and legs were bound together with duct-tape, I was lying sideways in the middle of a circle of chalk, and I was gagged. I stretched my will out towards it and it was just that, chalk. Marcone hadn’t bothered closing it with his will, something even a vanilla mortal could manage. This slight confirmation that yes, this was all for show calmed me down a bit, but I was careful not to let that show on my face. I started making outraged noises instead, and struggling against my bonds.
“Thank you gentlemen. Exceptional work. If you could leave Mr Hendricks and I alone with our guest?”
They trooped out. I glared up at Marcone and tried to convey the fact that if he didn’t untie me instead of standing there with a considering expression on his face, the consequences would be dire.
“You’re much easier to work with like this,” he said, looking down at me. I strained to convey fuck you scumbag with the force of my scowl.
He reached into his jacket and drew a knife. Walking into the chalk circle, he stepped behind me and out of my line of sight. That triggered pretty much every runrunrunFIGHT reaction I have going, and I rolled over onto my back instinctively so I could still see him. I’d gathered my will as well and held it tight as he looked at me and sighed.
“I can’t free you if you insist on wiggling around, Harry.” First name terms. Now he was just taking liberties when I couldn’t John him back. I glared some more.
“We’ll start small then.” He pulled the tape from my mouth in one quick motion. I managed not to yell.
“Hi John. Nice place you have here.” He set a hand on my ankle while he cut through the tape. “Watch the knife. I’m going to be pissed if you catch me.”
“Have a little faith Mr Dresden. I’d never stab you accidentally. Now, are you going to let me free your hands, or do you plan to spend the rest of the evening like this?”
He hadn’t staged an elaborate abduction simply to use me as a pincushion. I knew that. I knew that the coiled power and danger of Marcone wasn’t actually directed at me, that he was silently straining to wreak vengeance on whichever idiot was trying to play us off against one another.
“As long as you’re gentle with me.” I answered in a trembling falsetto. I almost batted my eyelashes as well, but he was holding a knife. Marcone’s hand on my ankle tightened briefly before he shifted and caught hold of my shoulder, rolling me onto my side. There was a brief tug against my wrists, and then I could move my hands again. That was a very sharp knife. I was suddenly glad of his precision.
Contents of my G-docs WIPs. This omits the things I have written in notepads, because that way lies madness.
WIPs
Filename: Vadderung/Harry
I reached the dias, bobbed down on one knee for all of a fraction of a second, and then sprang back up to stand at the side of Maeve’s throne, looking down at her smiling upturned face. “What the fuck, my lady?”
Maeve broke off her song, and blinked up at me with a slow smiled. “Harry,” she said, delight thick in her words. “You’ve picked up a patron. Aren’t you a clever Knight?”
“I can tie my own breeches and everything,” I said. I held my right hand over her, senses extended, but whatever influence might be exerting itself was eclipsed by the sharp ozone tang of Winter’s power, calling to the Mantle that bound me. “What the hell does a Faerie Queen have to drink to get wasted? Turbo-Absinthe?”
“A token of appreciation,” she murmured, one hand trailing down to the floor beside her throne before holding a horn out to me. By rights, it should have been empty after being wrong side up on the floor. Instead, it was brimful of golden liquid. “Try a little, Knight.” I accepted the horn from her but didn’t drink. I sniffed it instead, and it felt like I’d been punched in the face by a fist full of honey.
Mead.
Oh.
Add that together with the suddenly garrulous court, and there was one obvious conclusion.
Filename: Don’t Blink Chap 1
Sometimes I chanced the lifts in John’s residences, when I was by myself. With Hendricks it was always the stairs. He steadfastly refused to get in little metal boxes with me when getting out of them depended on me not frying the circuitry. Like I said, no fun at all.
There were a lot of stairs. My ankle throbbed, my rest of me ached. “Hey,” I said, as my ankle protested the beginning of yet another flight, “I thought it was the fifth floor in this building?”
“Seventh, this month. Boss told you last week.” Last week? I hadn’t seen him last... oh yeah. I’d thought he’d meant the seventh floor of the building he owned on [STREET NAME] though.
I just about made it without denting my pride. If it’d been the eighth floor, I might have abandoned my quest and settled in for a nap in the stairwell. Hendricks punched a code into a numberpad that I stood well back from, and then led the way down the corridor to pound on what must have been John’s apartment door. It swung open after a couple of seconds, and there he was. John. He was in sweats and a t-shirt, which was sleepwear for him, but he didn’t look like we’d woken him. He must have been waiting up for me. Oops.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at home, Mr Hendricks?” John asked, as if I wasn’t leaning against the wall directly opposite him. His hair had that soft and messy look I only got to see late at night and early in the mornings. I clamped down on a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets so I could resist the temptation to reach over and pet him.
“Boss,” Hendricks said, which could mean pretty much anything between the two of them. I was familiar with a couple of the most frequent uses ( 1. ‘I think this is a terrible idea’ 2. ‘I’ve got your back’), but this was the prologue to one of their silent discussions. It was conducted entirely in subtle facial expressions and was completely unintelligible to the innocent bystander. In this case, me. Beginning to feel ignored, I crossed my arms over my chest and winced when it spread the viscous ichor around. Ugh.
My wince must have caught Marcone’s attention, because he stopped and looked at me expectantly. “Oh, hi honey, how was your day?” I asked, and then proceeded as if he'd had time to answer and ask a question of his own. “It’s sweet of you to worry, but this blood isn’t mine.”
“I hope not, Mr. Dresden. It’s blue.”
John made a valid point.
Still, a guy can sulk when he has to expend serious effort persuading his boyfriend’s henchman not to shang hai him to the hospital and his actual boyfriend doesn’t seem to notice. Except then John redeemed himself by saying, “The water’s hot, if you’d like to step inside.” Stars, a shower. I had ichor in my hair.
The pair of them leaned away from me as I limped through the door. Charming. I’d have been offended, but I couldn’t spare the energy. I was going to need it if I wanted to be able peel myself out of my clothes. I’m never ever exploding a demon, ever again. Next time I’ll just let it bite my face off.
Filename: Authority!Figure-OriginalLuccio
“You saved my life tonight,” Luccio said calmly, sitting down as she dropped a bottle of ale on the table in front of me, “and disproved several of my preconceptions about you.”
“Oh yeah? So you *don’t* think I’m an evil mastermind? Morgan seemed pretty ‘die warlock die’ about the necromancy.”
“Donald is set in his ways, and for good reason. You, Dresden. You are decidedly more...flexible.” She took a long drink from her own bottle, draining it down before slamming it back onto the table. I’m pretty sure it was theatrics. She was trying to distract from the half smile that had been trying to work it’s way onto her scarred face.
“You bet. You should see me dancing the Can Can.”
She snorted and then pushed her chair back, shaking her head. “A pity,” she murmured.
“What is?” We’d come out of it pretty well tonight, I thought.
“How terribly young you are,” she replied. “I’m rather tense after that duel, and the most appealing candidate for a bed partner would make me feel like a cradle snatcher.”
I froze, bottle half way to my mouth. “I...wait, me?” I asked in astonishment. I don’t know what surprised me more, that she thought I was appealing, or that she’d find anyone appealing. She was kind of, uh. Mature. I hastily tried to wipe any traces of those thoughts from my face.
Luccio sighed. “There we are. You have all the social graces of a giant lumbering puppy.” She looked me up and down in an assessing manner. “Perhaps I’ll buy you dinner, a few decades from now. If you make it to maturity without dying in an interesting fashion.” She turned back to the room, where the Wardens under her command were doing their best to drink Mac’s dry of Ale. It was spectacularly after closing time, but apparently he’s willing to risk trouble with the city council for an averted apocalypse. I’d remember that for next time .“Have a good evening everyone.” She got several respectful nods and a couple of good nights, and then strode from the room, cloak flowing behind her in what I had to admit was a pretty kick ass fashion. I couldn't manage that without some helpful pathetic fallacy from a passing breeze.
Abandoned things that I doubt will get written:
Filename: Control (...this has no bearing on what’s actually inside it)
The next time we met, we got stuck inside a closet I’d hastily warded, squeezed in between boxes of god knows what, pressed up close against one another as I tried to get my pentacle off and lit up to weave a useful charm.
“Stop that,” John growled into my face.
“Stop what?” I grunted, trying to retrieve one of my arms from between his shoulder and the wall of the closet, accidentally pulling him tighter against me in the process
“Writhing, you bastard.”
“I’m not...” my brain caught up with my movements, and reminded me that maybe dry humping my best friend wasn’t a brilliant idea, considering his longstanding crush on me and iron clad refusal to acknowledge it. Helpfully, I snickered.
“Dresden, if you even think about making a fucking in the closet pun, I will cut you.”
“I’m not sure I’m up for knife play on the first date, John,” I said, successfully retrieving my arm and then squeezing it between us to get at my amulet. The action pushed his torso back from me a little, and probably bent him backwards at an uncomfortable angle over a box. Which had the unintended side effect of bringing his hips in alignment with mine. Oh.
“Fucking bastard. Fucking drop you off a goddamn pier, you fucking- “
“Did you leave the Gentleman in your other suit, John?” I asked. He dropped his head onto my shoulder and snarled out his frustration. I wiggled around a bit more and managed to pat him on the back.
“Yeah. Along with my self control, apparently. Sorry. Take it as a compliment?”
“It’s a very large compliment,” I said, somehow managing not to laugh.
Filename: Harry/omc
It was 10 in the morning, and I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to be in Mac’s. I was only there myself to pick up an order. It was too early to sit down for a drink. I ’m not an alcoholic. Despite my hardboiled detective noir image, I can’t actually pull off hard-drinking. I was there to pick up some beers for later that evening.
So the well-groomed dark haired guy perched agilely on one of the barstools kind of took me by surprise. I was even more shocked by the way he was intently chattering away to Mac. It’s like chattering to one of the 13 pillars holding up the roof. Most people give up when they don’t get a response.
“And I think Charlotte was more broken up about it than I was. Nine years old. You know she was born three months after I got with Ricky? He’s her favourite uncle. And he still sent her a birthday present last week. Makes it difficult to have a proper hate-on and get over him. Nine years. Christ. I need a distraction.”
Mac grunted, and then nodded in my direction.
Loquacious-apparently-recently-dumped-by-his-distressingly-decent-boyfriend guy turned to look. And then he tilted his head.
“Huh. Tall, dark and handsome. Yeah, that’ll do. Can I buy you a drink?”
I think that’s some kind of land speed record for time between entering a bar and getting hit on. I blinked.
“Friend of yours, Mac?” Call me paranoid, but people taking an interest in me out of the blue unnerves me. But Mac grunted and nodded.
“Oh, sorry, manners! I’m not usually this forward, actually. I’m Luke Shaw, pleased to meet you. Mac’s known my dad since forever.”
Forever had the potential to be a lot closer to literal among my acquaintances, so I held out a hand to shake his in a test.
“Harry Dresden.” I said, carefully watching him. No zap of power. He felt mortal.
“So, would you like that drink, Harry?” It was a brief, strong handshake, though his fingers brushed against my palm a little longer than necessary as he broke away. I raised an eyebrow. “Damn. I’m not your type?”
“Not exactly. You’re kind of disadvantaged by the whole guy thing you have going for you.”
He grinned. “But that was a gentle put down, for a straight guy. Sweet. Let me buy you an entirely platonic coke in exchange for the pleasure of your platonic company? I’m moving back to Chicago and wow, this place isn’t what it used to be.”
Filename: Somebodyplaysthem
I had no coat. My rings and staff and rod and pentacle were missing and weirdly, so were my boots. Looking at my socks made me feel strangely vulnerable. As fake kidnappings go, this was pretty damn thorough. My hands and legs were bound together with duct-tape, I was lying sideways in the middle of a circle of chalk, and I was gagged. I stretched my will out towards it and it was just that, chalk. Marcone hadn’t bothered closing it with his will, something even a vanilla mortal could manage. This slight confirmation that yes, this was all for show calmed me down a bit, but I was careful not to let that show on my face. I started making outraged noises instead, and struggling against my bonds.
“Thank you gentlemen. Exceptional work. If you could leave Mr Hendricks and I alone with our guest?”
They trooped out. I glared up at Marcone and tried to convey the fact that if he didn’t untie me instead of standing there with a considering expression on his face, the consequences would be dire.
“You’re much easier to work with like this,” he said, looking down at me. I strained to convey fuck you scumbag with the force of my scowl.
He reached into his jacket and drew a knife. Walking into the chalk circle, he stepped behind me and out of my line of sight. That triggered pretty much every runrunrunFIGHT reaction I have going, and I rolled over onto my back instinctively so I could still see him. I’d gathered my will as well and held it tight as he looked at me and sighed.
“I can’t free you if you insist on wiggling around, Harry.” First name terms. Now he was just taking liberties when I couldn’t John him back. I glared some more.
“We’ll start small then.” He pulled the tape from my mouth in one quick motion. I managed not to yell.
“Hi John. Nice place you have here.” He set a hand on my ankle while he cut through the tape. “Watch the knife. I’m going to be pissed if you catch me.”
“Have a little faith Mr Dresden. I’d never stab you accidentally. Now, are you going to let me free your hands, or do you plan to spend the rest of the evening like this?”
He hadn’t staged an elaborate abduction simply to use me as a pincushion. I knew that. I knew that the coiled power and danger of Marcone wasn’t actually directed at me, that he was silently straining to wreak vengeance on whichever idiot was trying to play us off against one another.
“As long as you’re gentle with me.” I answered in a trembling falsetto. I almost batted my eyelashes as well, but he was holding a knife. Marcone’s hand on my ankle tightened briefly before he shifted and caught hold of my shoulder, rolling me onto my side. There was a brief tug against my wrists, and then I could move my hands again. That was a very sharp knife. I was suddenly glad of his precision.