crack_van | Charmed, by Leila Sharpe (NC-17)

beg pardon, folks, we hit a rather large pothole back there. now that i've fixed the flat, let's continue on our way. my next rec is slash, in an AU i haven't seen mentioned here before.

Fandom: Magnificent 7: Escorts AU
Pairing: Chris/Buck/Vin
Length: est. 50k
Author on LJ:

maygra
Author Website: Leila's Version of the Escorts AU

Why this must be read: Maygra is possibly one of the most well known authors in all of fandom - at least older fandoms. She's written in Highlander, Sentinel, Star Wars, Fast and the Furious, and Supernatural, and every where she goes, she leaves her readers begging for more. And for good reason. Her stories are polished and professional, deal effectively and realistically with varying issues, and the sex is hot hot hot.

I wanted to put in a recommendation for the Escorts AU because this AU is one of the more tightly woven ones. It's all about the sex - the 7 are members of a small male escort service that's run by Larabee. They each have specialties and kinks and the service itself caters to high-class clientele. Charmed is a good introductory story to the universe, as even though it focuses on Chris, Buck, and Vin, we see all 7 and how their personalities translate to this setting. The major 'trip-up' here is that it's set in modern-day Boston, for the most part, not in Denver or other western town as might otherwise be expected. And I say 'trip-up', but it's not so much a problem as it fits well with the series, but a might be a distracting surprise if the reader isn't aware of the setting before-hand. And really, who wants to be distracted from the Magnificent 7 having lots of hot sex?

I tend to consider this AU somewhat darker and rougher than usual. This is primarily because high-class or not, the sex industry sees with and deals with the seamier side of life all the time. That gives stories in this AU a chance to delve into darker urges, reasonings, needs that can make individual tales extremely powerful. And then after you've come down from the high of good sex, you think, 'Wow, that's... painful. Come here (character of choice), let me cuddle you and take all your worries away.' Either that, or you just flip to the beginning and read it all over again. :-)

A Morning in The Old Hotel:

The rooms on the third floor were off-set to those on the second and be it dancing or fucking, the ceilings below would tremble a bit. Structurally sound, but old houses tended to be gossipy in their own way and JD's room was just under and between Vin and Chris' rooms. None of the floors were level save the one in the gym, and Chris had had to have a structural engineer lay a fitted slab there to get it right for the equipment and the pools.

It might have been less noticeable if Chris wasn't so enamored of that massive monster of a sleigh bed with its heavy ornate grillwork at the head. They'd had to carry it up in pieces, both the size and weight making it too much to carry whole even using the hotel's less than cargo-ready elevator. Custom built, although not to Chris' order -- he'd found it at a flea market. It took both a queen-sized mattress and a single to fill the frame, and both padded so deeply you ended up sinking into it like it was all of feathers or clouds before you hit the firmness beneath. And he'd had to have the sheets custom made to fit it, but there was no better bed in the world to get up to the things Chris liked to get up to. No other bed Buck had ever seen that could hold seven men without someone putting a foot on the floor.

Not that Buck had been asleep when Vin and Chris had started up. No, he and JD had been getting up to their own early-morning mischief when he'd first heard it, seen the fixture in JD's room start to shake a bit.

It had gotten JD all tickled and tied up in knots of laughter, even without being able to hear voices, which sometimes you could if the ventilation system wasn't running. Buck had been half-tempted to go on upstairs and linger outside the door, or maybe slip inside to watch because one or the other of them, or both, had been working hard at something.

Charmed by Maygra writing as Leila Sharpe

-bs