The Black Phoenix Inn

This is my favourite kind of established relationship fic, exploring the "learning how to be together" phase of a relationship. Sweet but in a believable and not too sweet way. This one contains some spoilers for The Long Game, but is mostly set after the end of that book.

Heaven Has Got Nothing On Us (Oh, I Love You Even When My Body Turns to Dust) (39629 words) by overlycaffeinatedgalaxy

Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

( Summary )

Challenge #15

How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go?

Not as well as previous years. lol. I was going well up to challenge 9, and then life happened and I got behind and it all got too much and I crashed and burned. I did enjoy taking part, though, and it was good to interact with some new people as well as people I already knew. Really, the interaction is what I want out of snowflake more than anything, so in that sense it was a success even though I didn't get to all the challenges.

We survived the high of 42C/107F yesterday - thank you, ducted air con - but I wound up with a particularly bad headache that snuck up on me over the course of the day. It was one of those days when I kept wondering why everything was so hard and I couldn't get anything done. Eventually, when the penny finally dropped and I took some painkillers, my first thought was: I can't think straight. I can't write! This is it. I'll never be able to write again.

I will just point out here that I have lived with chronic daily headache and migraine for literally decades - and yet logic still goes out the window every time I get hit with a bad one when it's been a week or two since the last one. The human mind - what can you do? I think I'll try to write something tonight, just to prove to myself that my mind while in the grip of a headache doesn't know what it's talking about.

Today has been much better. The headache has departed and the max temperature today was 'only' 35/95. You can really feel the difference in how less suffocating the air outside feels, even though the poor garden is still baking. It's going to get back up to 40/104 again tomorrow and the day after, though, so we'll see how I go. I'm having my weekly massage tomorrow, which should help stop my upper back from clenching up too much.

One other side effect of the hot weather is that we're only sleeping under a sheet atm, so no real surprise that I was awakened fairly early this morning by my feet being pounced on, not long after D had left for work. When I opened my eyes I was surprised to find that it was Abby, who is seven now, and not Olly, who is not quite ten months old. Then she growled, and I realised she thought my feet moving under the sheet were a moving kitten. Even after six months, she is still DEEPLY offended that Olly exists, and, worse, that he exists in her house.

So I rolled over and went back to sleep, and a while later I got woken up by another pounce. This time it was Olly. He didn't let up, so I had to fold the doona back over to protect my feet. Then, when I'd spoilt his fun, he jumped up to play with the blind cord. At that point I incarcerated him in his bedroom. (Yes, he has his own bedroom with his own special fluffy bed, blanket, litter tray, scratching station, water bowl and overnight snacks, partly because he's spoilt to death, and partly because every time we leave him free overnight, he wreaks havoc on the other pets and the house in general. I guess we're getting off reasonably lightly, though. As a friend pointed out to me, think how much worse he would be if he hadn't been desexed.)

Have some pics:
( Cat pics )

I wrote a couple of fills for threesentenceficathon. There could be more, but for now there's these two:

She Knows
Fandom: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Pairing: Percy/Marguerite
Rating: M
Prompt: she knows

( Read more... )


Rumours
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters: Hayden & Shane (Shane/Ilya implied)
Rating: G
Prompt: Have you heard the rumors about us? 

( Read more... )

I've fallen behind with fandom snowflake this week. I'll have to see if I can catch up tonight. Oh well, it's meant to be a relaxed challenge, so it won't really matter to anyone except me if I finish it or not.

While I've been not doing snowflake, I HAVE been reading quite a bit of Heated Rivalry fic lately. It's been quite a while since I last just sat down and read a bunch of fic for a single fandom. It's been nice to just immerse myself like that. Not sure if I'll write anything. Even apart from all the hockey stuff, it's a very (North) American canon, and I haven't written for a fandom like that in a really long time. But maybe. We'll see. I do have the kernel of an idea. Maybe. Perhaps. If I have the strength, I'll do a recs post, at least.

(I did manage to write a three sentence fic for threesentenceficathon today. I might write a few more if the mood strikes.)

One funny thing. I just left kudos on a HR fic, and noticed that half a dozen names along from mine was an old friend who hasn't had time for fandom for the last few years until very recently. Looks like we have a fandom in common again, for the first time in... fifteen years? More? I'm laughing at the way I found out, though, particularly given the sheer quantity of kudos a lot of the fics in this fandom get. What are the odds that we should leave kudos on the same fic at almost the same time? I guess we must have both followed the same rec, but STILL.

Meanwhile, the weather is being pretty brutal here. The other week, we had the most intense heatwave since the Black Summer six years ago, but this week's heatwave is going to be worse. It got to about 37 (98F) today, which felt like walking into an oven whenever I opened the front door, and it's going to be similarly hot for the next few days, but they're forecasting 43 (109F) for Wednesday. I'm super glad I don't have any appointments that day. I'm just going to batten down the hatches and stay in my nice, cool air-conditioned house until the temperature finally drops. It will be one of those days when it might still be around 30 at midnight, though, so I think the dog's chances of getting a walk that day are basically nil.

I still haven't made it to the beach this summer, mostly because of the weather. Every weekend it seems to be either a heatwave or else a post-heatwave storm, neither of which makes for fun travelling to the beach or being at the beach conditions. There were also four shark attacks in 48 hours along the coast last weekend, including one in Sydney Harbour. That NEVER happens, so everyone is a bit freaked out. The attacks occurred in the aftermath of a big storm, when a lot of storm water was washed into the sea and stirred it all up, though. That attracts bait fish, and the bait fish attract sharks - plus climate change has made the water temperature warmer, which means that the sharks hang around in the area for longer. I grew up a five minute walk from the beach, and my dad taught us from an early age that murky water is sharky water, so there's no way I would have gone swimming in those conditions. But it's clear that not everyone knows that rule. It might be time for the authorities to add a "don't go swimming in murky water" warning to the usual summer slip, slop slap (slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat) campaign.

I'm flying up to the Deep North in a few weeks to visit my mother, so maybe I'll get a chance for a swim while I'm there. She lives right on the coast, which makes it a lot easier than trying to have a day at the beach from here.