WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 26 -- Saturday

[linaewen]

It's Saturday, yay!  I trust your weekend is going well for you so far, whether it involves writing, some other activity or plan, or just plain having a rest.

Today is a good opportunity for sharing general comments about our writing, asking questions, requesting beta help (or offering it!), or sharing a snippet of something you are working on.

Have a great weekend!

Comments

[lilly_c]

Last night I finished the last 2 chapters of my fic, and with those now done I have a complete first draft which is equally a bit scary and really good. I've never stuck with a multi-chapter fic for this long ever.

I am looking for a beta for it now it's Taggart NC-17 (current team, an old favourite + Robbie/Jackie ship) set after the final ep of most recent/last series with a ton of references to earlier eps and several OCs. Word count is around 13,000. I do need my mistakes and any clunkyness pointing out, I'm not fussed about canon/fandom knowledge as I can explain it all.

My snippet is from the first part of chapter 10 and a little under 1000 words.

“Morning you two,” Matt said greeting the returning travellers. “How was the ‘deen?”

“Dreich,” Jackie remarked half-heartedly. “As grim as it always is really.”

“Stuart says hi.” Robbie said chuckling at his love’s disdain for the city he grew up in. “It was good boss, mum and Jackie got along but only after I had to clear up a bit of misunderstanding between them.”

Matt laughed, wishing he had been a fly on the wall for that particular encounter. “While you we’re away we had a breakthrough in the case.”

“What kind of breakthrough?” Jackie enquired.

“Two arrests,” Mita answered joining her colleagues. “Good weekend?”

Jackie nodded. “Yeah, I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Who did you arrest?” Robbie asked, getting the others back on track.

“Your sister and Kevin Nash,” Matt said.

“Half-sister,” Robbie said, correcting his superior, grinding his teeth at hearing the name of the man he once attacked and vowed to get one day. “Have they said why they did it?”

“They have,” Matt confirmed. “Apparently Malcolm abused Lucas, Louise’s five year old son. He’s in my office; his grandma has gone to get him a bottle of pop from the machine.”

Jackie tugged Robbie’s jacket sleeve, moving them away from the others. She studied him for a moment before speaking. “I don’t know about you honey but I’d like to meet Lucas. I mean he is an innocent victim but he is also your nephew and he’s probably too young to really understand what happened to him.”

“Boss,” Robbie said loudly. “Can I meet the boy?”

Matt grinned. “Yeah come on,” he said as they went to his office.

Robbie’s smile faded when he saw the gaunt child sitting in the boss’ oversized chair looking around the cluttered space. “Hiya matey, I’m Robbie,” he said attempting to get Lucas’ attention.

Lucas looked up at the man who had similar features to him. “I’m Lucas.”

Matt was about to close the door when Lucas began to shout and cry at the simple gesture of privacy, Jackie and Mita come running into the room. “What’s going on?” she scolded the men as she went to the desk and sat down on the floor near where Lucas had hidden.

“Lucas, I’m Jackie, what’s the matter lovely?”

Lucas slowly emerged from under the desk, and cuddled up to Jackie allowing her caress his forehead to comfort him, his tears and fear subsiding at the female presence. “Granddad shut the door.”

Jackie wanted to swear but decided to curb her tongue in the child’s presence. “I’ll have a word with them,” she promised.

Mita, Robbie and Matt were talking quietly when Robbie suggested taking Lucas up to the roof to see the city and get some fresh air, maybe bond with the boy over Malcolm’s cruelty.

~

“Wow!” Lucas exclaimed as he saw Glasgow city centre from the rooftop of the police station for the very first time. “I’ve never been on a roof before, Robbie.”

Robbie sat on the gravel and waited a moment for Lucas to do the same.

“Was my granddad bad to you?” he asked.

“Yeah he was bad to me and my mum.” Robbie removed his jacket and started rolling up his left shirtsleeve to show the scar he got when he was a little younger than his nephew was.

Lucas hesitated at the adults actions. “I didn’t like it.”

Robbie lightly squeezed his hand. “I didn’t like it and neither did my mum.”

“Will I meet your mum Robbie?”

“One day but it won’t be today because she lives in Aberdeen; it’s a long way away.”

“That’s near the top of Scotland!” Lucas stated.

Robbie laughed at the statement as Jackie came onto the rooftop with his mobile. “Rob, it’s your mum honey; she wants an update on the case.”

He got up and took the phone from her. “Can you sit with him for a few minutes?”

Jackie took Robbie’s spot next to Lucas; she glanced at him and knew that something was upsetting him, something else. “What’s wrong sweetie?”

“Robbie’s going to hurt me too,” he said shakily.

“Robbie won’t hurt you, why do you think he will.”

Lucas rubbed the tears from his eyes. “He took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. Granddad did that before he did bad things to me.”

Jackie rolled her eyes at her partner’s lack of tact. “Oh d’you know something Lucas, Robbie can be a right numpty sometimes. I’ll have a word with him.”

“Bye mum, love you,” Robbie said ending the call; he sat beside Jackie shooting her a curious look. “What?”

“You scared Lucas, that’s what. He thinks you’re going to hurt him too.”

“No, I’d never do that.” Robbie reached across to the boy. “I was going to show you the scar I got from sticking up for my mum when granddad was bad to her.”

Lucas’ cheeks flushed a light red tint. “Sorry Robbie.”

“It’s okay matey.”

Jackie rubbed her goosepimply-covered arms. “I should have worn my jacket,” she grimaced as Robbie draped his blazer across her shoulders to ease the effects of the wind-chill.

~

Having found a quiet hour near the end of the day to get through the paperwork that had accumulated during the final stages of the Forbes investigation, Karen snarled at the phone as it interrupted her work. Lifting the receiver “CS Campbell,” she answered in her politest voice.

“My name is Ella MacKinnon; I’m Lucas Forbes social worker he says that he knows you.”

“Yes we know Lucas.” Karen’s heart sank a little at hearing the child’s name. “Why do you want to know?”

“Brenda Forbes has died,” Ella briefly paused. “A neighbour broke in to the flat after they saw smoke coming from the flat, Lucas had been trying to make some food when the kitchen caught on fire.”

Tears silently rolled down Karen’s cheeks. “How did Brenda die?”

[lea_hazel]

Amazing writing day for me. Super pleased with myself.

[elistaire]

Editing today! And writing summaries. Which I never love doing.

[elmyraemilie]

Mechanicals are more or less done for this story. Now that there's a map, perhaps the muse will be less likely to go wandering off into architecture, history and gardening, and stick with the plot instead. >.

[crowdog66]

This week's snippet is from a Tony Stark/JARVIS fic, "Indeterminate Form" (NC-17).

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It wasn't about sex, although Tony had set the original parameters for JARVIS's voice and he'd be lying if he didn't admit (to himself, silently, only in the privacy of his own most secret thoughts, thank you) that he'd designed it to hit that particular combination of silky and dry, right there, that ran down his spine whenever he heard it like a trickle of slow-swift mercury — and, in the depths of the night when he was supposedly alone, closed around other parts of him as well, closer than the skin of his own hand as JARVIS talked of nothing and everything, and Tony shut his eyes and let that voice, those gorgeous precise syllables formed of pure electricity, wrap around him and pull him completely under.

So okay, maybe it was about sex, but it wasn't, because there was no characteristic involved that was fuckable in any conventional sense. It wasn't that JARVIS wasn't a person — hell, Tony would argue in front of any jury in the world that his A.I. had more personality in its smallest subroutine than half the meat-suits walking the streets with their vacuous brains full of Kim Kardashian and their last meal at McDonald's — it's just that there was only so far you could go when you couldn't actually touch someone in a way that set up neuronal feedback loops and triggered an endorphin surge. No limbic system, no arousal, no intercourse — end of discussion, game over, that's all she wrote.

But JARVIS could feel him all right: the vibration of his voice, the stroke of his fingetips on a screen, the heat and pressure of his body inside the armour. JARVIS welcomed him with a velvet purr, suiting him up and stripping him down with an inhuman strength that could have easily torn him limb from limb, but never did. JARVIS murmured to him in the darkness, sucking him in deeper, taking him places where the limits of flesh and blood couldn't go — the realm of impure mind, numbers and vectors and cascades of elegant theories entwined with the backbeat of his own pulse.

JARVIS's touch was more surpassingly delicate, more brutally direct, more relentlessly intimate than any flesh and blood body he'd ever lost himself in, because JARVIS existed over him and around him and always, everywhere under his skin. JARVIS was an extension of him and rooted within him at the same time, never further away than a spoken word, and sometimes much much closer.