prompting time

[slybrunette]

To celebrate my newfound freedom:

PROMPT ME:

fandom | pairing | song lyric

(Fandoms: Grey's Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Lost; also making exceptions for Dead Like Me, Oz, BSG)

Last time I got through the first half-dozen; this time it is my goal to surpass that.

And...go!

ETA: Prompting closed. Thanks for playing.

Total Finished: 4/19 and counting

Comments

[klutzy-girl.livejournal.com]

Grey's Anatomy | Mark/Lexie | You can spend all your time making money, you can spend all your love making time

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

post holidaze.

---

(Love is not the issue.

Because, really, it never is, it’s just what people would like to believe the issue is. It makes it that much easier; it makes it less of a failure on your part, individually or as a whole, and turns it into something that’s just not meant to be. Like when the other person decides they never want to get married and crushes your dreams of fairytale weddings and ‘til death do you part and then you shrug it off and pack your things, and suddenly you never really loved them at all – for the record, she left that part of herself somewhere on the plane to Boston, to Harvard, years ago.)

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong; I don’t even know how to do this.”

The remote’s within reach and she silently wishes she was the type to throw things. Instead, she lets her hand shake at her side.

(She’s not entirely convinced that Mark ever had that part in him to lose.)

“I see more of her than I do of you. And I know that you haven’t spent all that much time around her but she is really not the kind of company I want to keep.”

“So this is about her?”

“I don’t know, is it? Because ever since she showed up you suddenly spend more time at the hospital.”

“This from the woman who wouldn’t leave the hospital for more than a few hours for a week straight because of the merger.”

“I was worried about my job.”

“You think the rest of us aren’t?”

“You’re an attending.”

“And last time Webber got pissed at Derek he tried to fire him. Believe me, firing the people he’s paying the big bucks to is probably something that’s crossed his mind.”

(Work is the issue. Time is the issue.

Because eventually there comes a point where quickies in the on-call room lose some of their magic. There comes a point when she starts looking at her watch and saying things like ‘I’ve only got twenty minutes’ and thinking about that big surgery more than she’s thinking about his hand inching up her thigh or his lips against her collarbone. There comes a point when pulling twelve-plus hour days and coming home to his freaking daughter and having him fall into bed next to her near midnight because he had a late surgery or drinks with Derek or whatever becomes something she just can’t brush off.

Maybe that’s it. It sounds like less of a lie.)

“You’re avoiding her.”

”Lexie,” and in that moment she hates the way he says her name, like she should just melt at his tone. He isn’t going to finish it and she knows that; it’s just her name, desperate and just there, and he’s hoping maybe she’ll drop it entirely.

“And now you’re lying about it.”

“Just…figure it out. Figure this out. You have no plan and there needs to be a plan because there’s a girl, you’re daughter, who you never talk to, and she’s going to have a baby and she’s going to need a place to stay and we can’t deal with that. I can’t deal with that.”

He flinches, just barely; maybe he knows where this is going.

“Figure it out and call me when you do.”

(Love is not the issue.

Because when she tosses her stuff in a suitcase and dials her sister’s number and practically begs her way into a week or so spent on Meredith’s couch or back in the attic, she also makes sure the alarm is set the way she does every night and corrects the grocery list on the kitchen counter.

She does those little, fairly insignificant things because they are habit. She does them because she isn’t sure he’ll remember to do those things and she’s mad at him but he still has to be at work in the morning, just like she does. She does them because she intends to come back and she’d prefer to return to an apartment with the correct brand of orange juice, without the pulp.

Love is not the issue. And maybe work or time isn’t the issue either but she can’t claim that she doesn’t love him and it isn’t killing her to leave right now. She can claim that this is all an external thing, something that’s not their fault, not entirely, and something that’ll someday pass, hopefully sooner rather than later.

It’s easier than the inevitable ultimatum, the ‘it’s your daughter or me’. It’s easier to force his hand and cross her fingers that he’ll remember what he’s missing and he’ll make this work.)

[citron-presse.livejournal.com]

”Lexie,” and in that moment she hates the way he says her name, like she should just melt at his tone. He isn’t going to finish it and she knows that; it’s just her name, desperate and just there, and he’s hoping maybe she’ll drop it entirely.

That (the whole fic actually) is such perfect, cynically-angsty, heartbreaking awesomeness that all I can do apparently in response is list words! I hope that will do. Plus . . . I ADORED this.

[caer.livejournal.com]

”Lexie,” and in that moment she hates the way he says her name, like she should just melt at his tone. He isn’t going to finish it and she knows that; it’s just her name, desperate and just there, and he’s hoping maybe she’ll drop it entirely.

I agree with the above about this line. Just...I love this take on them. It's heartbreaking, and real, and just so, so perfect.

THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS.

[archibalds.livejournal.com]

Grey's Anatomy | Alex & Izzie | "He could never get drunk enough to get her off his mind." -- Alison Krauss and Brad Paisley, Whiskey Lullaby.

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

i hope this is okay. i tried but my muse is misbehaving tonight.

---


I.


“More?”

“More.”

Meredith eyes him, slow, careful, hands wrapped around his glass and her own.

Cut off time is coming.

She still gets up, refill, and he’s lost count of the number of times she’s done that. They’ve been here awhile.

He still thinks of Izzie with every flash of blonde walking through the door.



II.


There was one point where he considered doing a shot for every time Reed looked at him like she was actually being subtle.

Alex decided that he’d rather be able to walk out of the bar tonight.

There was also, briefly, a moment where he considered sleeping with her so that at least she’d stop looking at him like he was someone she could save.

He thinks he might lose some of his resolve then, this confidence that he’s in the right and he won’t be the one to grovel and he’s not going to get in the car and drive straight to Chehalis and beg her to come back.

So he stays seated and doesn’t let himself feel even a tinge of remorse when the doe-eyed woman leaves with the guy who’s been staring at her all night.



III.


It’s when he starts to drink alone that he identifies it as a problem.

It’s when he starts to drink alone that he realizes maybe it’s high time he just moved on and labeled her as another failure in a never-ending string of them.

He’s gotten good at that.



IV.


So (a woman, a man, a priest, a duck, whatever) walks into a bar…

He’s always thought that was a stupid premise for a joke.

It’s a surprise then, when Izzie actually does walk through those doors, takes a seat next to him at the bar, and doesn’t say a damn word, that he feels like laughing (bitter and burning to match the liquid swirling in his glass).

The joke still isn’t funny.


V.


“I can’t.”

It’s fill-in-the-blank really, for the rest of that sentence. Pick one. Pick five even.

If he has to narrow it down he thinks he’d go with: I can’t stop thinking about you.

He can’t put her down any more than he can put down his glass and he can’t let her go and he can’t let her be another damn failure because there’s only so many more times he can recover from that.

In the doorway, she leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together and he exhales when she whispers “I know” and wraps her arms around his neck.

At work, shirking my duties...

[crickets.livejournal.com]

lost + jack/sawyer/claire + "you wrote our names down on the sidewalk but the rain came and washed 'em off"

Re: At work, shirking my duties...

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

There was an old abandoned house, the shutters closed and cobwebbed and the grass too tall and a shade somewhere between healthy green and sunbaked brown, and this was somehow what they ended up calling home.

It was her idea. Back when it was just her and Jack and it didn’t take all that much to get to him once she was already under his skin.

“We could fix it up,” she’d said and bit her lip to keep the reflexive ‘you like fixing things’ from coming out.

It was a project, it was a thing to do with a purpose that kept him occupied, kept him from thinking too much, and so he’d said “yes” with very little fight.

There was very little fight left in Jack.

Claire planted a garden in the back, vegetables and herbs, things she’d learned back on the island, and wore this ridiculous wide-brimmed hat to keep from burning underneath the afternoon sun. In the evenings she’d cook and talk and run her fingers over whatever bruise or cut he’d gotten that day and wonder if it would scar (they never did).

In the summer, there was an old beat-up truck parked out front and then there was Sawyer.

“Well ain’t this cozy,” he’d remarked and she kissed him in quiet in lieu of calling him a hypocrite first (for the comment in the face of their past) and an asshole second (for leaving the last time).

The house had smelled like paint then, open windows and gauzy white curtains moving with the slow breeze (she feels all grown up again, with her curtains, and she thinks of her mother and thinks of Thomas, and hopes history is done repeating itself). There was splattered paint where it wasn’t supposed to be, just to the right of where she’d stopped for the day, blurring the line where the powder blue she’d chosen met the sunny yellow that was left behind.

At night, the three of them fit together like puzzle pieces and Claire tried to shake off the feeling that she couldn’t quite see the big picture from down here.


---


There is an old abandoned house, the shutters closed and cobwebbed and the grass too tall and a shade somewhere between healthy green and sunbaked brown, and this is somehow what they end up calling home.

She left Australia behind on a sixteen hour flight. She left California too, along with the son she’d never know, and found some place quiet and landlocked and new.

Some place to start over.

The place badly needs sprucing up, which she does, and the gutters need cleaning and there might be something wrong with the pipes, which she hasn’t figured out how to do, but she manages. In the afternoons, she gardens, and that’s how she meets him.

His name is Jack, he tells her with a proffered hand and something like a smile, and he just moved here a month ago, right before she did.

“I used to live in California.”

“What made you leave?”

He isn’t looking at her when he replies, “Too close to the coast. The ocean.”

Claire smiles and doesn’t tell him that the ocean makes her feel uneasy nowadays. She doesn’t tell him because it doesn’t make sense to her yet.

Eventually, he offers to clean the gutters and take a look at the pipes. She offers to make dinner. One night he brings alcohol and they stumble into bed. Things move in the natural sort of way that these things do.

In July, she buys paint and unloads her car while a pick-up truck pulls up alongside the curb. A man with a southern drawl and shaggy blonde hair tells her he’s got car trouble. He’s looking for a place to get it checked out, on his way elsewhere. She directs him, ends up having him follow her. The mechanics say three days and she offers up the spare bedroom in her house.

When she gets home, Jack’s moved the paint she left in the driveway, in her haste, into her house, and she learns the man’s name, Sawyer, right before Jack does.

It takes the car four days to be fixed; he parks it on the street and doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave. She isn’t in any hurry to make him.

He asks about her and Jack, once. She ducks her head and says “we’re just friends”.

The next time it comes up, he doesn’t ask, just slips inside the bedroom and shuts the door, fitting alongside them with ease.

In the morning, she paints over the powder blue walls with the bright sunny yellow she bought.

[bebitched.livejournal.com]

big bang theory | sheldon/penny | "and you need me to do better than you / i disarm you in the morning"

lost | aaron/ji yeon | "we were born on an island / grew out of the sand"

big bang theory | any | "fond but not in love"

[book-babe.livejournal.com]

!!!

Oz | Beecher & Keller | What if you could wish me away? What if you spoke those words today?

[gigglemonster.livejournal.com]

lost + alex/richard + "the edge in your affection broke my skin"

i was gonna do sheldon/penny because i loooove when you write them but i've also been dying to prompt someone with this lyric and i didn't think it quite fit them ;)

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

fyi, if you want to add a Sheldon/Penny prompt to this, you are completely allowed.

I'm working on getting the A/R done as we speak however.

[foibles-fables.livejournal.com]

Grey's Anatomy | Mark/Lexie | "watch him turn on the spot / to see his memory from a different angle" (Something for Kate, "Beautiful Sharks")

[caer.livejournal.com]

Grey's | Derek/Mark (I assume non-canon is okay?) | we're still have having fun/and you're still the one.

ETA: Heh, forgot the other half of the line...oops.

[nursebadass.livejournal.com]

Grey's Anatomy | Cristina/Alex | But I am never beaten, broken, not defeated, I know that next to you is not where I belong,

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

i think i'm just as frustrated with this as i am with the show. and i think it shows. but i tried damn hard.

---

Never let it be said that Cristina Yang does things half-assed.

She supposes a similar statement could be made for Alex and it’s a bit of a comfort -- if she was really looking for that sort of thing -- that the same thing holds true for the both of them. When they cut, they do it straight to the bone.

And really, she’s just tired of being told she’s doing the wrong thing, being treated as if she was just as green as the day she walked in these doors for the first time, being jerked around by a guy who brought her a cardio god in the form of his almost-girlfriend.

Alex’s thing…well it’s all about Izzie. It’s always been all about Izzie. Most of the time she finds it pathetic. Sometimes it angers her. It makes her hate him, that he can let himself get so wrapped up someone. He should’ve learned by now, that it never turns out well.

(Really, they should’ve learned by now, but she’s not about to go so far as admitting that part out loud).

People like to play out revenge scenarios in their minds. They’re feeling ignored, they’re feeling slighted, they’re feeling some other complicated emotion that Cristina doesn’t feel like delving into.

Her and Alex just took that one step further. Because they don’t do things half-assed.

Instead they do things in her apartment where she knows full well Callie and Arizona will notice, will hear, will spill to Owen either by accident or out of some sense of obligation to tell him, because he’s their friend too. It’s a risk she’s willing to take and it’s a risk that means absolutely nothing to him.

There’s no one for this to get back to, for him. Not anymore.

He pushes into her and says a whole host of inappropriate things into her ear, against her skin, and he calls her ‘Yang’ like this is just part of their daily conversation. She keeps her eyes open and looks straight at him and asks aloud if this is the best he can do. They push and poke and prod and piss each other off but at least they’re not kidding themselves.

They’re not trying to fool themselves into thinking that this is something it isn’t, or that they’re with someone they’re not.

This is all a means to an end and they’re just pressing the fast forward button for lack of anything else to do about it, for want of a sense of control that keeps evading them.

yay! you writing! yay!

[darsfebruary.livejournal.com]

Grey's
Callie/Arizona
"Dr Yang, now her voicemail box is full/And she won't call me/I'm feeling like a fool/The last time I saw her in her car, I threw her shit out in the yard, Locked her out and headed to the bar."

And you had best believe those are legit lyrics.

[beerbad.livejournal.com]

Grey's Anatomy | Meredith/Lexie | there are some who give blood, but I give love

[ladybeth.livejournal.com]

Greys Anatomy | Alex/Izze | I love this record, but I can't see straight anymore

(It was hard to find lyrics with a possibility of both happy or angsty. All the song lyrics I was coming up with were on the angsty side. This pair has enough of of that inherit, so I went with lady Gaga. )

[http://users.livejournal.com/_takemeaway_/]

Grey's | Meredith/Derek | I swear to God we're gonna get it right / if you lay your weapon down

[citron-presse.livejournal.com]

Grey's | Mark/Derek, If you can't leave it be, might as well make it bleed

[liljan98.livejournal.com]

Darn, I'm too late. I knew what kind of fic I'd love to get, but I had to find some lyrics for that first ;-) I'll keep those for the next time then..

[slybrunette.livejournal.com]

Find the lyrics and I'll sneak you in. Because I feel like it.

[bebitched.livejournal.com]

Back for more!
TBBT | Sheldon/Penny | "your heart is a strange little orange to peel"

[krizue.livejournal.com]

This is amazing!!
it's a lot more "real" that that thing we got, were there was no reaction whatsoever... sadly this is where the show is pointing to, and I really love them together...

Anyway, you captured the emotions lovely