Fandom: TEEN WOLF
Pairing: Stiles Stilinski/Lydia Martin, Allison Argent
Length: 5390
Author on LJ: scoutshonor [friends only]
Author Website: At AO3
Why this must be read: Read the author's note, heed the warnings there if you have triggers. This fic got some flack when it was posted, people either seemed to really identify with/love it [me] or hate it. It's all about being lost and not knowing what you want and ... how you may or may not *want* to do what you're doing in the meantime, even if you're doing it without objections. Here's the thing, I like realism in my fic. The dirtier, grittier, truer to life that they are, the more I like it. I don't know very many people who haven't -- at least once -- been with someone because they were there and available. Lydia has to come to terms with how this makes her feel about herself and the people around her who can't see that it's not what she actually wants to be doing.

Everyone knows that Stiles Stilinski has had a crush on Lydia Martin since the third grade. Beacon Hills is a small school in a small town with a long memory for gossip; by the time they’re sixteen, people treat Stiles’ crush as scientific fact. Stiles has brown hair and brown eyes and a crush on Lydia Martin. It’s nothing to remark upon. That’s just how things are.

She acts like it’s embarrassing because it is, kind of. He asks her to dances, tries to get her attention in the halls, shows up to her birthday party with outsized presents and promises, with stars in his eyes every time. She sighs and shrugs and tries to ignore him because she can’t even imagine what it’s like, to be him: it must be humiliating.

What she doesn’t let on is that it’s also awful to have someone want you so passionately and exclusively when you are singularly unable to return that ardor. It’s not like she hasn’t thought about it, mostly as part of schemes to make Jackson jealous, but when she looks at Stiles she feels her heart stutter, slow: he just looks like a lost boy, big whiskey eyes and close-cropped hair, snub nose, round cheeks, innocent and affectionate and useless.

“You should give Stiles a chance,” Allison said once, when they were still getting to know one another, when she was still moony-eyed over Scott’s dopey smiles. “He’s really—he’s sweet.”

“I have a boyfriend,” Lydia said, smiling her sharpest, ugliest smile. She didn’t want Allison to be dumb like everyone else, and maybe she isn’t: she dropped it, anyway, hasn’t mentioned it since. But now Lydia doesn’t have a boyfriend, anymore. Jackson told her he loved her and then let his parents move him to fucking Ann Arbor. Michigan. She misses him, of course, but she also she misses the way he protected her, the way she could just say I have a boyfriend and everyone would shut up and leave her alone.




Compound a Compound

Fandom: FRINGE
Characters/Pairings: Lincoln Lee/Alternate Olivia Dunham/Alternate Charlie Francis, Peter Bishop/Olivia Dunham/Lincoln Lee
Length: 2197 words
Author on LJ: realifehiatus
Author Website: on Ao3
Why this must be read:

The altverse trinity of Liv/Lincoln/Charlie is quite popular and this fic has an intriguing variation on it, dealing with amber!Lincoln's usurping of alt!Lincoln's place. The best part of this fic is that it isn't easy for Lincoln to belong in their universe, it fills in the hard graft of his forging his own position on their team and in their hearts.

The Past Is a Grotesque Animal

Fandom: PERSON OF INTEREST
Pairing: past John Reese/Jessica Arndt; John Reese & Harold Finch
Length: 1600 words
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: fic on AO3
Why this must be read: So really, my favorite pair for this show is Reese/sad faces. There aren't any pictures in this fic, but plenty of Reese reflecting on who he became and who he was before, when he was with Jessica... and how he has changed again since meeting Finch. (The rating strikes me as excessively cautious, by the way.)

In a New York Minute

Fandom: Bandom (Panic at the Disco)
Pairing: Ian Crawford/Dallon Weekes
Length: 1,786 words
Author on LJ: inlovewithnight
Author Website: at the AO3
Why this must be read: Once I saw the photos of Ian Crawford dressed up as Hit Girl, I knew I needed fic for it. This is the ultimate fic for it ^^. Incredibly hot.

Hey Little Girl

(Thanks for tagging ♥: bandom, fanfic)

Seeing the Thor: Dark World trailer has revived my love for Loki...

Fandom: Avengers movie!verse and comic!verse
Pairing: Loki/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Steve Rogers
Length: 19,447
Author on LJ: sam_storyteller
Author Website: sam-storyteller
copperbadge on AO3

Author’s Summary: Tony knows he shouldn't sleep with Loki, it's just sometimes he's drunk and she's female and he forgets why.

Why this must be read: It’s funny, it’s sexy, it blends a lot of the best things from the movie!verse with the comic!verse. Because it’s written by Sam, who is rightly considered one of the best fanfiction writers on the net. Because I love Loki and Tony, and I love the notion of characters whose gender is literally "malleable", as Tony puts it.

And for the line "Five hundred and forty-three women, fifty-two men and one god of malleable gender."

Extremely Hot and Currently Female on AO3
Extremely Hot and Currently Female on DW
Also available as a podfic!

Fandom: NARUTO
Pairing: none, Team Kakashi gen
Length: 29 chapters, 73,500 words
Author on LJ: chibirocka
Author Website: FF.net profile page
Why this must be read: This fic is an emotional roller coaster for the audience as they watch Sai handle changes in his life and teammates with progressively worse reactions. *wince* I found the fic very engrossing, and definitely enjoyed reading it. Sometimes I just love seeing my favorite characters squirm! X3 This fic has a different take on Sai and (fanon) post-war Sasuke, both of which I rather enjoyed. And for all the author's flailings that the fic is super-dark, TBH I've read darker. This one isn't sweetness and light by any means, though. Warning is spoilery, but for those extra-cautious: major character death [set after a fanon ending for the war, and contains spoilers through chapter 617 (late January 2013)]

Apparently the first half of this fic has related videos on Youtube and Deviant art, as mentioned on the author's profile page and in the relevant chapters. I didn't watch them and enjoyed the fic just fine, but apparently they are quite popular. C:

墨 Sumi by 1Yui

Fandom: STARGATE ATLANTIS, SG-1
Pairing: Sheppard/Mitchell, Emmagan/Kanaan, Brown/McKay
Length: 72k+
Author on LJ: bluflamingo
Author Website:
Why this must be read:
Atlantis wasn't Cam's first choice for reassignment; he probably wasn't Atlantis' first choice for the new expedition leader either. Sometimes you work with what you've got anyway, even if what you've got includes seers, ill-advised rescue missions, replicators, wraith in the city and John Sheppard.

AU where season 4 of SGA takes place with Cam as commander on Atlantis instead of Sam Carter. It's mostly from Cam's POV, who feels entirely out of place and is trying to find his footing at first in a city where is distinctly an outsider to the community that existed there for the 3 years. Cam doesn't have the 10 years of experience at the SGC like Sam did, and his relationship with McKay and Sheppard are different from what her's would have been (McKay especially, who hasn't entirely gotten over the lemon incident), so his approach to action differs from Sam's. Where the differences between events here and in canon are subtle at first, but the developing relationships between all the characters and their slightly different approaches to events lead to different outcomes.

There is an interesting mix of familiar and unfamiliar in this season 4, and there's a a slow building Sheppard/Mitchell here that introduced me to and sold me on the pairing. The writing style really made reading through this fic go a lot faster than I anticipated which is to say that it's great and worked at least for me and hopefully for you.

Never As Bad As Anticipated (Until It Is)