Fandom: STAR TREK REBOOT
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Length: ~20k
Author on LJ: littlebirdtold
Author Website: LittleBirdTold’s works on AO3
Why this must be read:

I’m a bona fide hurt/comfort junkie, and of all the tropes within that genre, one of my favorites is presumed dead. There is something completely irresistible about pretty heroes and heroines mourning prettily about their nearly departed (and pretty) loved ones. This one doesn’t disappoint.

Four years into their mission, Spock is lost in a transporter accident, and Jim falls into a depression that can’t be alleviated by anything but the sound of his deceased First Officer’s voice from his personal logs. As he struggles with his grief, he also learns that Spock had been working on the transporter system and figures out a way to bring him back. And that’s only the first half of the story!

The rest falls into a wonderful clueless!Jim fic (and I love that trope way too much, lemme tell ya), where it takes not one but two of his friends to hit him over the head with a great big clue bat PLUS alienating his future t’hy’la to figure out what he’s missing in his life. This is simply a delicious, initially angsty story written by one of the most delightful authors in the fandom – please give it a read!

( Here is an excerpt… )

Within Reach on AO3

Fandom: FRINGE
Characters/Pairings: Olivia Dunham/Lincoln Lee
Length: 1020 words
Author on LJ: tiptoe39
Author Website: on Ao3
Why this must be read:

Straight up Amberverse Olivia/Lincoln fics are rare enough and smut even more so, but what I like best about this is how layered it is with the compare and contrast elements to it. With Olivia worrying she is defective/lesser than Alt!Olivia, combined with her recognition of Alt!Lincoln's feelings Over There, it raises the question of how similar they are to their alternates. Also, to whether she could capture that in this Lincoln, making it well-considered and nicely character revealing smut.

Quiet Echoes

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Amy Pond/Rory Williams
Length: 2684 words
Author on LJ: snowdarkred
Author Website: http://snowdarkred.tumblr.com/
Why this must be read: There are other stories about what characters besides the Jones family and Jack Harkness were up to during the Year That Never Was, but this is easily my favorite. We get to see Amy become the steadfast hero she was always meant to be (with Rory by her side), with snapshots of how an aborted timeline might have affected both of them, unknowingly, after the fact. I love how the author weaves in her stubborn dedication to the Raggedy Doctor she's still waiting for, as well as the inimitable Martha Jones. Go read!

( Amy’s aunt dies in front of her, screaming as the sphere things burn her to a crisp. )

Amy Pond and the Year that Never Was

Fandom: STARGATE ATLANTIS, SG-1
Pairing: Gen, Sheppard/Mitchell
Length: 9493, 9570
Author on LJ: minervacat
Author Website:
Why this must be read:
In which John Sheppard hates cricket and accidentally starts an intramural soccer league, and Cameron Mitchell thinks McKay's sister sucks.
&
In which: John is appalled by SG-1, Cameron is relentlessly cheerful, Jack drinks beer, Teal'c roots for Florida, Sam flirts with Wisconsin fans, Vala tries to show her breasts to basketball players, and Daniel is mostly oblivious to all of it.

Basically, the 2 fics (the 2nd being the sequel) boil down to 'John Sheppard and Cam Mitchell bond over sports'. No actual knowledge of sports seems necessary considering it's pretty much a foreign language for me and it wasn't a bar to enjoying the story. The first part is mostly gen while the sequel comes with the pairing.

'The Towers...' takes place on Atlantic and works really well as a long-distance friendship fic where John finds one of the things he strangely misses most about Earth is access to ESPN. John ends up email-ing back and forth with Cam about college football mostly, but their interactions involve mocking teams and each other, sports news, bitching about soccer, and somehow becoming friends while John sulks about Cam's team stealing John's team's coach. Meanwhile, we get to see a community building in Pegasus that goes beyond the explore+survive nature of the show. It's a nice chance to see characters making Atlantis feel a little more like home and John connecting with someone over non-Atlantis related topics.

The sequel involved John on earth going to games with the entirety of SG-1. There is some hilarious SG-1 team bonding and mocking, a lot of drinking, and a really comfortable dynamic between John and Cam that works for the actual laid back sides of their personality that comes through.


The Towers On The Heights Reach To Heav'n's Own Blue
Steal The Thunder From The Sky

Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: None
Length: ~2,000
Author on LJ: desireearmfeldt No fandom content on LJ, though.  For fanfic, go to:
Author Website: Desiree Armfeldt on Ao3
Why this must be read: If I'm being honest, our fandom is pretty stuck on guys.  Considering that those guys are Fraser and his Rays, that's not too surprising.  Loving on them alone is doing due South's awesome female characters a disservice, though, and there are some good stories in them as well. 

"Bounty Hunting Season" is one of those stories.  When Maggie MacKenzie and Janet Morse meet at Maggie's detachment up north, Janet's on the trail of a shithead from Montana (I apologize on behalf of my home state).  This is a short fic, only a meeting and testing each other's mettle, but it's great characterization of both women.  From biases and preconceptions about each other's lines of work and truly epically bad days on both their parts, they recognize in each other the strengths that they value.  This fic takes the tedious and painful parts of law enforcement as seriously as (and probably more realistically than) the show and reckons each woman's willingness to work the rules as necessary.  Maggie's as good at doing what is right as her brother is and Janet's not just in it for the money.  I would love to see a longer work by Desiree Armfeldt following Maggie and Janet's team-up, but as it is, I'll be content with this fic.

Warning: The rating is for some discussion of sexual abuse of children and its ramifications, but there are no graphic details.

Bounty Hunting Season

Fandom: NARUTO
Pairing: none, Team 7 gen
Length: 5 chapters, 19,942 words
Author on LJ: oroburos69
Author Website: Oroburos69's master list
Why this must be read: The author provided the perfect summary for this fic: The Wave Mission is a failure. Team Seven is captured. Sasuke is gone. Kakashi is next. Sakura has no choice but to be a hero.

A frequent thought in Naruto fandom is: what if Sakura weren't so helpless at the very beginning? This fic's author takes that idea and delivers. They have written a powerful--and gruesome--ordeal as genin Sakura saves everyone, even (some of) the bad guys. OMG YES. Warning: graphic violence and off-screen torture. [splits from canon during their first encounter with Zabuza and Haku]

Freedom in the Eyes of Another by Oroburos69