Fandom: WITHOUT A TRACE
Pairing: Danny/Martin
Author on LJ: carleton97
Author website: Entertain Me
Why this fic must be read:

The thing I like best about this fic is that it takes into consideration all the little canonical soap operatic tidbits the show's been tossing at us in season two, dealing with them neatly and succinctly to make the slash believable within canon. And it really is, because, as I've been saying all month, Danny and Martin have a ridiculous amount of chemistry.

There's a little throw-away moment in "Revelations" in which Danny teases Martin with a little off-hand joke about bondage, and carleton97 runs with it and builds a PWP, yes, but one about trust and partnership and just exactly what Danny and Martin mean to each other.

Trust is a very important part of their ability to work together, and Danny breaches that trust in season one. They didn't deal with it on a very satisfactory level in canon, and this fic sort of fills in the gaps, if you will, showing why exactly Danny and Martin are back on a more or less even keel again in season two. The sex is hot and there's bondage, if that's your thing, but in the end it's about how far Danny's willing to go to prove that he trusts Martin. The story leaves you with the sense that they still have a long way to go toward repairing their working relationship, but by the end they've already said a lot without saying a word.

Not At All Or All In All

Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: none. Toby-centric genfic
Author on LJ: Not that I'm aware of; if she is, please let me know.
Author Website: West Wing Post Eps
Why this must be read:

Honestly, I could just rec every story Marguerite’s ever written, she’s just that good, but for now I'll go with this, since we all need a little Toby in our lives.

According to the author, 'Vidui' is the communal confession during Yom Kippur services.

Toby feels the need to atone, and though we begin with him sitting in the darkened synagogue, Marguerite takes us back to each of his attempts at making amends. The story is structured around the sins listed in the Vidui from which the story takes its title, and Toby goes to each of his colleagues and asks for forgiveness for sins both real and imagined, the weight of which he’s been carrying for a year.

This story is beautiful and touching and, most of all, brilliantly *Toby* -- duty, pride, love, faith and guilt all collide in him to produce the cynic with the secret soul of a romantic, possibly the deepest and best character on the West Wing (or on television today), and Marguerite *gets* him here, nails him in his full, conflicted glory, his unobtrusive and yet rock-solid faith, so rare in today's cynical world, drawing him in words and breathing life into him.

And she does all right with the other characters as well. *g*

I especially like the Charlie, Josh and CJ sections, and the Jed and Leo section makes me cry, but the whole thing is simply gorgeous.

A quote:

"The world can continue to spin out of control with or without me, I would think." He couldn't endure the sadness in her eyes, the expression he had put there many times in the past. "I just came by to do the usual thing, you know, tell you I'm sorry for being such a schmuck."

"Something specific, or just schmuckiness in general?"

She could always make him laugh, bring him out of the blue-black funks that settled over him more and more often these days. He flashed his dimples at her as he chuckled. "General schmuckiness."

"Four-star General Schmuckiness?"

"Five-star. I'm the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Schmuck."

Vidui by Marguerite

Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Catherine
Author on LJ: (if applicable) alyse
Author Website: Unconscious Mind
Why this must be read:

There's a certain appeal to Catherine and Nick together. She's the one who's seen everything, who has a familiarity with the undersides of Vegas that the show never fails to exploit. She's an ex-stripper, a recovering cocaine addict, and an incredibly strong and smart woman whose personal motto is to never look back and never regret.

If CSI needs someone to play dumb, they trot out Nick. He's the good ole boy, the Southern gentleman who really believes in justice. When a liaison with a hooker threatened to end his career, he still insisted on paying for her funeral because she didn't have anyone else and he had cared about her.

This is a gorgeously written fic that shows Catherine reflecting on these differences, comparing her life now with her life then through the lens of the men in her life, then and now.

Plus, it's really hot. There is really not enough good CSI smut.

Read, and enjoy, and feed the author. :)

All That Glitters

Fandom: STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE
Pairing: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan (and quite a few others along the way, if I remember correctly)
Author Website: Chez Bunny
Why this must be read:

Bonds of Choice deserves to be recced just for being the only fanfic story I've ever heard of with an original character who became so popular he got his own mailing list, but there is a lot more to this fic than that.

The much-loved character of Kourt Crowe is the key to what makes Bonds of Choice remarkable, though. The leader of a sort of Jedi black-ops team, who turn out to be much more than that, he represents a view of the Force as far more complex than what we generally meet in both canon and fanfic, a rejection of the simple separation of the world into Dark and Light that the Star Wars universe is normally all about. HiperBunny's story insists on shades of grey, on the possibility of dark actions being done in the service of light without leading to corruption, and this makes this fic more interesting than most.

The main plot, though, is the Qui/Obi love story, a tale about the seemingly insoluble problem of how to give yourself in love to another person without losing your freedom and your separate identity. There is sex and angst, philosophical discussions and fist fights, while Obi-Wan struggles with finding a way to live with himself and his feelings for his master, and in its very complexity, I think the relationship rings very true. Real love isn't easy, and this story doesn't try to gloss that over.

Bonds of Choice is a huge story full of original characters, in many ways different from most TPM fic, and nothing I say here can cover the scope of it, so you should just go read it for yourselves. It's one of those stories you really shouldn't miss.

Bonds of Choice