vaznetti | Chocolate Box Letter

Hello! This is, believe it or not, the first year that I have ever done Chocolate Box, but I was experienceing Yuletide envy and went looking at the tag set and, well, here we are. it is also ages since I've written an exchange letter but I feel like I have a lot of things to say here. The first of which, obviously, is to thank you so much for writing for me! I am actually really easy to please and I'm sure I'll like whatever you write for me. I've set out some very basic thoughts and prompts below, but feel free to go your own way, provided you stay clear of my DNWs.

In general, I like the following things: enemies being forced to work together; competent characters doing what they're good at OR being forced outside their comfort zone; relationships between equal partners; happy or hopeful endings; canon-divergence AUs; character-driven stories and plots; adventures, quests and other hijinks. I am perfectly happy to have what seems like a fragment of a larger story, if writing out a whole caper seems like too much work for an exchange with a 300 word minimum!

In terms of my smut likes, I am pretty vanilla. I'm really here for character interaction rather than specific sex acts, so if you want to fade to black that's fine with me. More specifically, hands and mouths are sexy; I love switching and simultaneous orgasms; I kind of like awkward or bad sex, too.

I DNW: A/B/O, D/s and related dynamics; harm to children within the story (references to canonical child death are fine, though); non-canon-setting AUs. In smut, I DNW: humiliation and dirty talk; scat or watersports; anal sex. I also have some request-specific DNWs, which are noted below and on my AO3 signup.

On to the specific requests:

Ivanhoe: Brian de Bois-Guilbert/Rebecca of York

If this pairing is wrong, I don't want to be right. I would love to see a somewhat or entirely redeemed de Bois-Guilbert, either a missing scene in canon or a post-canon AU where they run off to make a life together. It's been a long time since I have either seen or read this canon but my main memory of this pairing is that it was all about the ineffable hotness of the forbidden. Feel free to run with that.

Fandom-specific DNW: non-Jewish Rebecca (ie she can't convert -- but he could); non-con or dubcon.

Alias: Julian Sark/Allison Doren, Jack Bristow/Irina Derevko, Sydney Bristow/Lauren Reed

Who nominated three of my all-time favorite Alias pairings here? Did we know each other fifteen years ago? I love all three of these pairings, especially for the identity porn and the uncertainty it brings with it: betrayal has always been one of my favorite story beats and all three pairings are full of it.

My fallback scenario for all three pairings is that they're forced to work together to combat some external threat -- whether to themselves (for Sark/Allison), to Sydney (for Jack/Irina), or to Michael, I guess (for Syd/Lauren). Being locked together in a room with a bomb that's about to go off is always a great time to examine your feelings for each other, right? A bit of final backstabbing is always welcome here! And I feel very much in character for some of these pairings.

Sark/Allison Doren is a bit of an outlier here -- I definitely shipped them in a serious way, back in the day. I'd love a bit of backstory, either just before S2, or a missing scene from that season, while Allison is pretending to be Francie. Or maybe a scene from S3, where they have to confront how much has changed since they were together? I loved that dynamic, especially Sark's panic and desperation. And I'm always here for an AU happy ending for these two.

Formula 1 RPF: Lewis Hamilton/Nico Rosberg, Jenson Button/Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton/Sebastian Vettel.

What you need to understand here is that Lewis Hamilton is my forever fave. I love how he's matured as a racing driver and as a human being; he seems like a really great guy, and if he isn't one IRL, well, that's why this is RPF. I fondly remember the days when Jensen Button and Sebastian Vettel were successfully playing mind-games against him, and it's been fun watching him do the same to his own team-mates and rivals.

I'd love to see an old-enemies now-friends dynamic for Lewis/Seb, or else something set back in the day of Vettel's many triumphs with some dramatic irony. For Lewis/Nico, some hatesex while they were teammates and rivals? Or maybe an established relationship fic after Nico retured -- how would someone like Lewis, who seems constitutionally incapable of giving up, ever understand that decision? And for Jensen/Nico -- well, they both have Lewis Hamilton in common! Maybe Jensen can help Nico get over his love/hate rivalry with Lewis? Or maybe that's the spark that brought them together but they're building something new, now that they're both presenters?

For the record, I love all these guys, but I also think they're hypercompetitive assholes -- it comes with the territory. And speaking of that, I'd prefer not to see a setting-AU. Please keep the F1 RPF in F1.

Also, a fandom specific DNW: no noncon, please.

Crossover Fandom: Faith Lehane (BtVS)/Jo Harvelle (SPN), Lewis Hamilton (F1 RPF) & Peter Grant (Rivers of London)

Faith/Jo -- very old school here! Please feel free to ignore or indeed undo Jo's canon fate. My desires here are basic: they team up, kill something supernaturally dangerous, and have hot sex. Maybe it's a one night stand on the road, maybe they team up, maybe Jo takes Faith back to meet her mom. Probably at some point Faith has to rescue Jo, but maybe Jo has to rescue Faith instead. I'd prefer this to be a proper crossiver rather than a situation where Faith is a hunter or Jo is a slayer, but don't feel you have to make the worldbuilding match up: I'm happy to handwave it.

Lewis & Peter: I have no idea, I just know this would be delightful. Maybe Red Bull have put some kind of curse on the Mercedes pit lanes, and Peter has to sort it out? Maybe Lewis Hamilton has secret ties to the demi-monde? Maybe they meet because Peter has crashed another ambulance?

Fandom specific DNW: Peter/Thomas, even as a background ship.

The Expanse: Amos Burton/Chrisjen Avasarala, Amos Burton & Clarissa Mao, Bobbie Draper/Camina Drummer, Camina/Drummer/Naomi Nagata

The Expanse is one of my new favorite shows, and I love nearly all the characters; I even warmed to Holden and Miller on my rewatch. I love how the crew of the Roci love and support (and fight with) each other, and also how they all have external ties. I love how big and scary space is, and how dangerous space travel is. I love the worldbuilding and the different cultures. (I have not read the books.)

Amos/Chrisjen: I love their weird teasing/flirting thing, and it would be hysterical if they ended up calling each other's bluff and acting on it. And you don't have to take this seriously, but it would be interesting to see Chrisjen have to take Amos' background seriously: it is so messed up, and that presumably does have an effect on his sexual relationships, and Chrisjen is so protected and privileged in so many ways. Not that I want her to, IDK, apologise or something, but they come from very different earths. I think sex between them could be terrible, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Amos & Clarissa: I love that Amos is taking on a kind of mentorship of Peaches, and that he;s actually very good at it. I really love their friendship, and it's made me warm to Clarissa herself. What's particularly interesting is that she is actually stronger, and a better fighter, than he is, so she protects him as much as he protects her. It's the sense that they're helping each other move forward that I really love here.

Bobbie/Camina: I had not even considered this before I saw it prompted here, but it would be HOT. They are both very competent, very powerful people, and although I doubt they owuld ever willingly admit it they have a lot in common. I have no idea where the rest of this season is going, but maybe they have to team up to fight some common threat? Or they bond over their shared hatred of Earthers (I know Bobbie has changed her opinions about this, but I'm not sure Camina has)? Maybe they just meet up and have a very hot one-night-stand.

Camina/Naomi: This is canon now, right? Again, I have no idea where this season is going, but I really hope at some point they team up to take out Inaros, and then become joint queens of the Belt. Really! But I also love the doomed romance thing they have going: maybe they do love each other, but it isn't quite enough to hold them together against all the centrifugal forces of space and politics.

Warrior: Ah Toy/Nellie Davenport, Ah Toy/Original Female Character

There are SO MANY things I love about Warrior, and I was so happy to see it in the tagset! I love this story of the early Chinese community in San Francisco, and would love to see more of the historical background there (tragically, the Exclusion Act is just around the corner.) And one of the things I particularly love about the show is the character of Ah Toy: I love how she never gives up in her struggle to be independent, despite the racism and sexism she faces. I love that there is almost no line she won't cross to protect herself and the people she is close to. I loved her slow unbending toward Nellie, given the vast differences between them (and interestingly, both these women are based on real people). I like that she has had to examine her own life, as a brothel-keeper: yes, it's given her the security she needs, and yes, she tries to be as responsible as she can be, but there's still a cost.

I would love to see these issues examined further, either through a relationship between Ah Toy and Nellie, or between Ah Toy and another woman -- maybe another immigrant, maybe someone more politically interested than Ah Toy is. Just, more Ah Toy: that's what I want.