Time for WIP Wednesday (on a Friday), thank you sm for the tag @fancy-a-dance-brigadier ! I took so long the next Friday's come around :D
Post a snippet of a WIP
Tag you're it @sapphosewrites @lorenzobane @wanderingwriter87 @bijoumikhawal (but anyone else who sees this and wants to share your writing, consider yourself tagged by me😊)
Because I have been so, so, so incredibly deeply terrible about writing and updating my fics over the last couple.... years (sorry!!!), I'm going to include TWO extracts hash tag because you're worth it
From 'When The Fighting Stops', a Kira-centric fic I began writing in 2022 (and apparently left hanging 10k words in??) but definitely want to finish someday:
“Something the matter, Major?”
Kira looks up from her untouched plate. “Oh… it’s nothing, Odo.”
The shapeshifter nods slowly, his expression somehow crystalline and liquid both. “It’s just. You appear to be offended by your food. Is there something wrong with it?”
She purses her lips. “No, not really.”
“Hmm.” Odo crosses his arms. “… I only ask because, this isn’t like the old days. If something’s wrong with the replicator, you could always ask Chief O’Brien to fix it.”
“You needn’t remind me,” she huffs. Captain Sisko had personally requested no less than fourteen replicator tweaks in the last month, all so he could get his coffee, black, double sweet just right- only to then decide he’d be drinking Klingon raktajinos every morning from then on. Dax’s suggestion, probably.
“Well, is there anything I can do for you?”
Kira watches him linger in his usual, stilted manner, his eyes trained on her plate… and her own hand, arrested, paralysed mid-way. Would the Starfleet officers chattering away on the tables around them ever understand how unreal this felt, to just sit at a public replimat and order veklava? To have food simply appear on demand? To gather in groups and talk, in the middle of the promenade, with not a thought for the beatings or bombings or mass food cuts or sweeps for comfort women that could follow?
“Well, I…” Kira closes her mouth, wanting to smile at the absurdity of it. “You could join me.”
Odo’s face ripples with apprehension. “Join you?”
“If you want.”
“Major, you know I don’t eat.”
“Sure, but…” Kira lets her hands drop to the table. “It’s just, this isn’t right. Veklava, it’s… It’s meant to be eaten together, you know? You’re supposed to just- crowd around the bowl with a bunch of ravenous friends,” she giggles strangely, “and attack it like a pack of wild moburu!”
Odo recoils. “Attack it?”
“Yes!” Kira’s hands fly about, desperate to be understood. “It’s finger food, Odo. It’s meant to be shared, not… cut into pieces with Federation cutlery.”
“Ah.” The constable looks intrigued. “And, doing this makes it… taste better?”
Kira grins. “Yeah, actually.”
“Fascinating.” He nods, seemingly deep in thought- he really could be adorable, sometimes. Not that she’d dream of calling him that to his face. Hell, it’d probably hurt his feelings.
“Ooh! What’re we eating?”
Dax. Of course it was Dax, who else would just slide into the next chair and help themselves to a forkful of someone else’s food, like that was a totally normal thing to do?
“Uh,” Kira blinks. Odo looks almost shocked. “It’s… called veklava.”
“Mmm!” Dax cocks her head, nodding appreciatively. “Delicious. What’s in this stuff?”
“It’s, uh… flatbread, made of ground kinrel and water. You toast it, fold it with su’mav jam and meat, then dip it in glazed bolzeen. That’s a kind of syrup,” Kira explains awkwardly.
Jadzia purses her lips in thought, nodding again. “Sounds fun to make.”
“… It is,” says Kira, remembering some of Lupaza’s crazier attempts. “We never had the right ingredients in the Underground, but… we were pretty damn good at getting by. And we always had a good time sharing it.”
“And these are the right ingredients here?”
“Yup.” Kira smiles wistfully. “Funny, it… sort of tastes wrong.”
“Mm, oh, no, nothing this good could ever be wrong,” Dax says around a mouthful.
“Apparently, consuming it with cutlery is,” Odo contributes warily. “Wrong, that is.”
“Really!”
Kira realises she’s waiting for an explanation. “It’s finger food.”
“Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so?”
To Kira’s great surprise, Dax immediately takes a pastry in hand- and not just delicately between thumb and index, but smushed between all five fingers- and helps herself to a sticky bite.
“Mmm. Oh, wow! That's got a kick! Perfect.” Much to Odo’s horror, she wipes a little bolzeen off the corner of her mouth with her wrist. “You know, I think this is my new favourite food.”
Kira smiles. “I should… probably warn you, it’s not very healthy. I mean, last week you were trying to get me into steamed azna.”
Jadzia’s eyes sparkle, now; amusement dancing and unfurling within them like the gates to the Celestial Temple.
“Keep up, Nerys,” she winks. “That was last week.”
(yes, this Kira character study comes with a side of kiradax :D)
This second extract is from chapter 10 of 'Pretenders', a fic with lots of lovely people following it which I have not updated for *checks dates* nearly two years😱
~SOON~ (I did leave them on a terrible fight after all🙈)
“Doctor, I’ve been wondering- what did you think of the poem?”
Julian looks annoyed; possibly at himself, for being unable to resist the question.
He starts eating to cover it up. “Poem, what poem?”
“You know the one.”
“‘Kesatran’s Tears’? Or, that “symphony of sheaths” one? Really, I haven’t the-”
Garak is tempted to sheath this symphony as well; tuck it back inside the unsafe recesses of his heart. But no- he holds up Mila’s brooch, free of censor.
Julian continues the charade. “Was there a poem about brooches?”
(… As if you’d forget.)
Garak positively beams.
“Come now, you’re a curious man. Don’t tell me you didn’t take a peek.”
No response forthcoming, he pops open the hidden latch and lets the incriminating datarod slip unceremoniously out- it clatters with a clink that makes his nerves wince. There was no plausible deniability left now; none at all.
(And Julian could go on about emotional dishonesty as long as he liked- this was the fourth love confession he’d received from Garak alone.
One would think a man with his appetite for melodrama would appreciate such things.)
The agonising seconds scraping by could’ve been eternity for all he knew, all anyone knew when stripped down and observed in a torture chamber. But after absorbing some sugar and reassurance, finally, a corner of Julian’s mouth quirks upwards. It’s difficult to believe Garak had kissed it less than an hour ago, and yet…
It had happened. It was real.
The proof was creased into their well-tailored clothes.
“I did read it,” he admits. “Not just to satisfy my own nosiness, mind you- I was foolish enough to believe you might’ve left me some way of contacting you.”
Garak permits himself the sting of guilt; allows it to carve through his chest like a canyon.
“I’m impressed. Not everyone can hack through eight layers of my coding.”
Julian shrugs; the sort of well-oiled modesty that takes a lifetime of practice. “It’s a simple enough matter once one dismantles the base three sigma fractals. The rest crumples over like a house of cards.”
“Indeed! Well, I regret to inform you it was simply a poem.”
“Yes, I gathered that.”
He permits himself the visual of his friend scouring those vapid lines for encrypted meanings- present, of course; just not the truths he was hoping to find.
Elim. For once in your life, be clever.
(Mila herself, probably- snark and affection snaking out from her brooch like a djinn from one of Julian’s Earth stories.)
“Well?” he asks, voice actually splintering. “What did you think?”
A weak laugh escapes that nose, and Garak starves to kiss it again. Now, with his anchors to Cardassia slashed, he’s a lightship without a pilot, drawn desperately towards the sun- and he’s never been any good at resisting warmth.
“‘Twas all right. Could’ve used a little editing.”
“Ah. It’s better in Kardasi.”
“I read it in Kardasi.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. ‘S a good thing you’re so skilled at everything else, because m’sorry to say, you’re not exactly fabulous, as poets go.”
He laughs, heartily, “What makes you think I wrote it?” - and is rewarded with a deliciously patronising look.
(Though, it doesn’t quite reach his friend’s eyes.)
“Oh, I’d recognise you anywhere,” Julian mutters softly. “Like it or not.”
