I'm curious about your wip "danse macabre" because music but the title "two sickos one body" is so funny and I want to know more also.
These are both Faust fics, although they're from different versions! Danse Macabre is based on the Gounod opera, and specifically on the David McVicar production which has the Walpurgisnacht scene as a deranged nightmare French opera ballet (it's set in Belle Epoque Paris, basically around the time the opera was written/performed) and Mephistopheles in a fabulous ballgown. This ballgown.
In the production the scene does not go where this gif makes it look like it's going, but in my fic it does.
What the hell, have an excerpt. Behind the cut. I'll add on in a reblog to cover Two Sickos.
The light is grey and pale but it is enough to stab at his optic nerves. His head throbs. He is lying on the ground, half-buried in mud and trampled grass. He closes his eyes, rolls onto his back, turns his face to the sky although the rain cannot wash away the ache. His mouth tastes of vomit and champagne, cigarettes and blood, and something acrid that he could probably identify if he allowed himself to think about it for more than an instant, something he is absolutely not inclined to do. He has dreamed nothing.
Faust looks up at the sky again, rubs at his eyes, opens them to colored flashes, purple and blue and white, like—
—like the will-o'-the-wisps that had led them to—
—to the Brocken—
Faust's eyes snap open again. He is lying in the Brocken Valley. He is lying naked in the Brocken Valley and flashes of images break forth—white tulle and white hands and faces—beautiful faces—shrieks of laughter, intoxicating melodies—
—he sees Mephistopheles, with flames emanating from his eyes—
Ghost Wedding spoilers but in case anyone's curious, this scene is probably The main foundation for my characterization choices in basically any exchange between the tweels, especially if a third party is involved:
I’m in the process of plotting some xenobio fic with shallura and when I’m plotting fic, sometimes I have whole sequences pop into my head and this was one of those times. I was driving home from work and started laughing so much I nearly had to pull over to stop and write it down that instant.
"I don't know if this is above my place to ask, but—" Allura waved her hand, smirking in that way that told him that she was amused by his formality. Shiro answered with a hesitant smile, before he continued, "—but if you're the last Altean royal, wouldn't you be Queen Allura?"
"Oh!" Allura replied with a bubbly, chiming laugh, the kind that made Shiro's heart turn to jelly, "oh, I guess queen as a title means similar things in our languages, but the culture around it is different. You see, an Altean princess doesn't become a queen through the passing of a title or by inheriting it; an Altean princess becomes a queen after having her first successful clutch with her chosen suitor-surrogate."
"Oh, that makes—" Shiro's words tumbled to a halt, his brain skipping like pre-century vinyl as her words sank in, "—wait, clutch?"
Either my internet or tumblr is being weird so if you've already got this ask, please ignore! For the fic meme: twink fight fic, please?
I did get it! Twink Fight Fic (actual working title: la prospettiva de' perdimenti but I hadn't thought of it when I named the file) is a sequel to my recent fic sfumato, chiaroscuro, unione, which is about Leonardo da Vinci's assistant Francesco Melzi dealing with his maestro's death. In the sequel, Leonardo's partner Salaì returns to France (where Leonardo spent the last years of his life in the service of François I) and has to deal with his own guilt over being absent. Also Francesco Melzi judging him. Thus the twink fight.
(They're both well past twinkdom, actually. Francesco is almost 30 and Salaì is almost 40.)
Since it's Sunday, have some twink animosity, below the cut.
Francesco is sitting in the chapel, fiddling with some beads. The sunlight catches his thick golden hair; his soft pink lips move aimlessly over his prayers. He's always been pious; now, in his grief, he looks oddly saintly, like one of those prissy saints that Raphael paints. Raphael, but not Leonardo—Leonardo had never asked Francesco to sit for him, although he's certainly pretty enough. Perhaps he had simply not wanted to distract Francesco from his various administrative duties, but Salaì had felt a little stab of smug and fairly unbecoming satisfaction that the privilege of immortality in oils, the honor of being the likeness of a saint, had been reserved for Salaì himself.
(Now, Salaì had done some sketches. One of them, a drawing in red chalk in which Francesco's face was obscured but his lovely rounded arse most definitely was not, had caught Leonardo's attention, enough that he remarked aloud on the beauty of the work. If he'd guessed who the model was, he hadn't let on—after all, Francesco hadn't even been wearing a hat, let alone anything else—but Francesco had been in earshot and the ecstatic shade of pink he'd turned could have lit the entire studio.)
"Francesco?" Salaì says.
Francesco looks up at him, his grey eyes wide and strangely vacant, his expression unreadable.
"Giacomo," he replies.
It's been years since anyone in Leonardo's household had addressed Salaì by his baptismal name. Francesco had clung to it for years, out of his aristocratic formality or perhaps just out of jealousy. He's Giacomo again, back in Milan; he hasn't minded it so much, there. He can't imagine being Salaì with his sisters, and Giacomo feels all right when Bianca calls him that. But here—it's a reminder of his own apostasy.
"Melzi," Salaì says; all he can do, in the moment, is acknowledge the cooling of relations. But Francesco is already on his feet; he crosses the space between them in a few wide steps—and Salaì staggers as Francesco strikes him a sharp blow across the face.
Salaì is a sodomite! he'd thought, and then he'd thought, Maestro is a sodomite! and then, stumbling over the heels of that thought, came I think I am a sodomite! because Francesco was not sure which of them made him more jealous.
It's from a fic that's almost done and is tonally not like this at all otherwise, but it amused me so much that I had to share. Oh, Francesco.
@oldshrewsburyian tagged me in that meme where you are assigned a word and you give a sentence from a WIP that starts with each letter. She used sentences from one fic, but I used different ones. My word was SCENT.
S - Salaì knows, as soon as he crosses the threshold, that he is too late—that he has returned to a household in mourning, and not fresh mourning either.
(from la perspettiva de' perdimenti, aka Twink Fight Fic, in which Salaì and Francesco Melzi come to terms with Leonardo's death and with each other. Here we have Salaì returning to Clos Lucé after some time away in Milan.)
C - Cecilia giggles again, and her smile is radiant. "Oh, I can see why Ludovico likes you," she says.
(from an untitled fic with the filename "sforza dubcon" which is actually for the Rai Leonardo series, which may not have been well received but which has Aidan Turner and James D'Arcy generating a lot of unwholesome sexual tension so, like. What else was I gonna do? I put in a subplot about the painting of "Lady with an Ermine" because why not?)
E - "Even after losing everyone you're still ashamed of where you came from."
(from my sexy demonic possession Faustus fic Two Sickos, One Body, Mephistopheles calls Faustus out on his class shame after witnessing some of his childhood memories from inside his head)
N - "Now you come back?" Francesco's face is white, except for two flushed red pinpoints on his cheeks. "What, are you just here for your inheritance? He left you and Battista the vineyard. You could have just stayed where you were."
(also from la prospettiva de' perdimenti, Francesco Melzi is not happy to see his former colleague/frenemy with benefits)
T - The devil's face seems to split, now, and all Siébel can see is teeth, unnaturally white teeth. Human teeth: why doesn't he have fangs?
(from an untitled Gounod Faust fic in which local cinnamon roll Siébel has a run-in with Mephistopheles)
I am tagging anyone who wants to do this! Your word is BREAD.
