a_whale_bone | Rare Male Slash Exchange Letter (Reply)

Thanks so much for writing for me, and for taking a look at my letter! I'm requesting fic for all fandoms. DNWs, likes and prompts are all below. All prompts are just suggestions and should be taken as such - let your imagination run wild!

I have more ideas/prompts for some canons/characters than others, but I would be genuinely excited to get anything in this letter, regardless of whether I've written a long or short section on it.

Do Not Wants

General Likes

Smut Likes

Request One: Rogue One
Bodhi/K-2SO | Cassian/K-2SO | Cassian/Bodhi/K-2SO

Request Two: Lost
Sayid/Desmond | Sayid/Sawyer

Request Three: His Dark Materials
Baruch/Balthamos

Request Four: Harry Potter
Dudley/OMC

DNWs

Non-con
Mpreg
BDSM
Incest
Watersports & scat
Underage
Teenager (under-18)/adult romance and sex
A/B/O
Unrequested non-canon ships (except Chirrut/Baze, which is always welcome)
Breaking up the requested ship
Readerfic
Character bashing (characters can be critical of others, particularly if canon-compliant, but I don't like characters being made to be villains when they aren't meant to be.)

General likes

Mutual pining
Protectiveness, hurt/comfort
Competence kink
Strong sense of place
Complicated relationships with family, home, faith.
Friends-to-lovers
Complications of robot/human relationships
Slow-burn
Navigating robot/human sex
Trauma recovery
Tenderness and gentle touching (hair stroking, hand holding, face touches, all that stuff.)
Banter and snark
Women in leadership positions, working with/against other women.

Smut likes

Character-driven smut
Tenderness
Hand/finger kink
Wireplay
Interesting ways for robots to experience sex
Handjobs
Oral
Anal (for m/m)
Rimming
Erogenous zones
Very gentle dom/sub: holding someone down, hair pulling, pinned against a wall. (Nothing formal, though: no titles, collars; nothing very painful or rough; caretaking dom dynamic preferred.)
Praise kink

Request 1: Rogue One

Fandom likes:

I love K-2 being super protective and, in his way, very gentle and caring. He will Fuck You Up if you mess with someone he cares about (which is a short list of people).
Mutual protectiveness
Characters being competent and smart
Mission fic
Ensemble casts - I love all the Rogue One characters, so including them is great.
AUs totally welcome, provided K-2 is still some kind of AI.
Size-difference (K-2 is so massive, and I love it.)

Cassian/K-2SO

I like anything that deals with their shared history: how did Cassian reprogramme K-2? What were their early days together like, with K-2 adapting to life in the rebellion and learning how to navigate his own independence and growing personhood? Did others in the Alliance mistrust him, and how did they navigate that?
How does K-2 feel about what Cassian did, and about changing sides? Does he ever wonder if their friendship/love is something that Cassian programmed him to want? Does K-2 "belong" to Cassian, and how do they navigate that?
Slow burn developing friendship and/or romance - K-2 has never had a friend (maybe never had the capacity before), never mind anything more than that. Cassian is very tightly controlled and not the most open or vulnerable. I love anything where they learn to trust one another and open up.
Mutual badassery and protecting one another - Cassian would do anything for the rebellion, and K-2 will always protect Cassian.
If they survive Scarif, and the war, into the New Republic, how does that go? Being an Imperial droid is useful when you need to infiltrate the Empire, but when the Empire's been defeated, where does that leave you?
Navigating sex and intimacy with a droid must be a little bit weird, even if you're into it. It must be pretty weird if you're the droid in question. I'm always here for robot sex!

Bodhi/K-2SO

I am pretty into the idea that Bodhi and K-2 have a lot of shared experiences related to their time with the Empire, both of them as cogs in the great machine who managed to get away and strike a huge blow. Bor Gullet messed with Bodhi's mind, and K-2 would have experienced reprogramming and memory wipes at the hands of the Empire.
K-2 helping Bodhi adjust to life in the rebellion in a world where they survive Scarif. Or maybe after the war - does Bodhi have to face any trial or punishment for his work for the Empire? What is K-2's status in the New Republic? Can they help one another figure out a way in the new world?
In an everybody lives AU, Bodhi has a pretty steep learning curve when joining the rebellion for real. Do people still mistrust him? How’s he coping with any lingering trauma? What sort of place can he make for himself? K-2 has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and might be able to help Bodhi settle in (in his sassy K-2 way).
If you want to go darker: maybe Cassian doesn't survive Scarif, or is killed on a mission, and Bodhi tries to help K-2 process and live with grief.
Intimacy: what does that look like, to a droid? Has Bodhi had much of it, and how have his recent experiences changed what he wants/needs?
Navigating sex and intimacy with a droid must be a little bit weird, even if you're into it. It must be pretty weird if you're the droid in question. I'm always here for robot sex!

K-2SO/Cassian/Bodhi

I like a lot of the same things as for Cassian/K2 and Bodhi/K2
One of them is away doing something dangerous, the other two worry and distract one another.
Relationships with droids are generally not looked on kindly, so while the Cassian/Bodhi side of things can be fairly open, K-2 really can’t be. Tension!
If two of them have been together for longer, one of them teaches the newer person what the third person likes, i.e. exactly where to find the most sensitive sensors in K-2’s wiring, or K-2 giving some extremely blunt, not-very-sexy sex advice (he would either be the best or the worst sex advisor).

Request Two: Lost

Fandom likes:

First: I am very much a Lost apologist (I love the final season, the Sideways conceit, the ending, and I don't think anything necessary went unanswered). I have a problem with some things (most prominently for these requests is Sayid's season 6 arc - very happy for fic to play with that and develop it more), but I am mostly completely on board with the direction of the show.
Canon-typical weirdness, including time travel
Characters being competent and smart
Mission fic
Ensemble casts - feel free to include other Losties!
A real sense of place for the Island, almost as though it's an entity in its own right
Characters having to learn and grow and change through their experiences on the Island, and grapple with their pasts
Meditations on faith and loss and trauma through weird Island mystery stuff. I love that the story usually works in service of the characters and their journeys, rather than vice-versa.
Weird history of the Island, especially DHARMA stuff. Season five might be my favourite season.

Canon Relationship Notes:

I love Penny and Penny/Desmond, so please don't write out Desmond's love for her. I'm fine with other options! He doesn't think there's any chance that he could ever find her again? He doesn't think she cares for him anymore? He is able to love two people, particularly when time travel weirdness happens? All fine.
As for Nadia... I love her too, she's brave and kind and wonderful, but I fundamentally believe that a huge part of Sayid's arc is learning to move on from Nadia. She's so tied up with his past and his guilt and all the horrors there, and I want Sayid to develop past that and make some peace with himself. He loved Nadia, of course, but he needs to move on. I also have no issues with Sayid/Shannon (except for the fact that she died) - I'm happy for fics to pretend it never happened though, so long as there's no Shannon-bashing.
Juliet/Sawyer is one of my canon OTPs, but I'd be happy for it to just not happen if it interferes with a fic timeline (so long as there is no Juliet-bashing, and I'd love for her and Sawyer to be friends), or for Sawyer to still be processing and working through his grief for her in post-canon.

Sayid/Desmond

They are two of the most romantic people on the whole dang show, and are driven to great lengths by their love. They're both intense, focused, damaged, desperately lonely men who both need some grace and some healing. I would love some intense hurt/comfort between them, us-against-the-world in some kind of weird Island adventure. "The Constant" is justifiably known as one of the best episodes because of the Desmond/Penny story, but I love Sayid and Desmond's relationship through that whole arc - trying to figure out the dreamy weirdness of the freighter, Sayid going all-out to help Desmond even though he doesn't understand what's happening, the way they have to rely on one another - it's great.

Time travel weirdness! Maybe Desmond keeps flashing back to meeting past!Sayid and they have some intense thing that carries into the present. Maybe the reason zombified season 6 Sayid can't kill Desmond is because he realises that he loves him (and then he breaks out of his zombie state and can be his excellent, competent self again - seriously, if you do a fix-it for season 6 Sayid I will love it).

An AU where Desmond's future premonitions are of Sayid's death, not Charlie's. Combine Desmond's premonition time-travel oddity with Sayid's badassery in a jumble of protectiveness and growing mutual respect and loneliness and trauma leading to something between them.

Sayid/Sawyer

Slow-burn antagonists-to-friends-to-lovers! They were at such loggerheads when they first arrived on the Island and slowly their relationship changed (mostly because Sawyer mostly stopped being a racist dick and started to respect Sayid) - I'd love to see it continue to change into something more. They're very different men from very different backgrounds, but they also have a lot in common: losses at a young age; trauma; captivity. Any relationship between them would be extremely complicated, but that would make it so interesting.

An AU were Sawyer is one of the Oceanic Six, or Sayid doesn't leave the Island and ends up with DHARMA - they develop a relationship over the three year span. Maybe Sayid doesn't marry Nadia in this verse, and therefore she's not targeted, and he doesn't work for Ben as part of his grief/trauma/revenge? Maybe he and Sawyer can go and work on Habitat for Humanity together (Sawyer's well on his way to levelling up to being a Really Good Dude at this point in canon), or do something else good in the world. Or DHARMA! I love DHARMA, weirdos that they are, and I would love to see LaFleur!Sawyer growing and becoming responsible and patient and also falling for badass, competent Sayid. I'd also love to see Sayid in DHARMA from a different angle than when he was a 'hostile' (and what happens when he doesn't shoot little!Ben?)

Post-Island AU where Sayid survives! Sayid has nowhere to go and nobody off Island, and nor does Sawyer. They end up sticking together and re-acclimatising to the world and slowly recovering from their experiences together.

Request Three: His Dark Materials

Fandom likes:

Alternate worlds
Love-as-redemption
Canon-typical weirdness
Focus on personal growth and learning and kindness
Ruminations on faith and death
Family of choice

Baruch/Balthamos

I love the hints we're given about their history together and would love to see something from this: Baruch as a human falling in love with an angel? Why did Balthamos fall in love with Baruch? How did Baruch adapt to life as an angel? How did he make the choice to become an angel?

There have been angels rebelling against the Authority for a long time - I'd love to see Baruch and Balthamos in active rebellion, perhaps the moment when they're cast out from the Clouded Mountain. Or a conflict with Metatron, since he was apparently Baruch's brother in their previous life?

An AU where they both survive the War and are able to find peace - what does that look like, for them? Or do they get a moment of peace during their long rebellion? Or go weird: angels are beings of Dust and (presumably) go back to Dust when they die - do Baruch and Balthamos find one another again, their very atoms able to go back to the world and come together again?

Request Four: Harry Potter

Fandom likes:

Canon-typical weirdness
Focus on personal growth and learning and kindness
Family of choice
Harry! I love him, and would be happy for him to be included in some form.
Petunia overcoming her bitterness/grief over Lily and starting to process everything and accept the magical world a bit more. (Not remotely necessary though, if you'd rather not!)

Dudley/OMC

Dudley's later-books growth is so interesting to me. I want him to continue that, and to realise that his parents treated Harry terribly, and also did him no favours at all. I want him to start to question their attitudes, both to Harry and magic, and to other things - Uncle Vernon didn't want a "swotty nancy boy" for a son, so there's definitely homophobia and a distrust of intellectualism there. I want Dudley to wrestle with the attitudes that have been instilled in him and to learn differently. I want him to struggle to stand up to his parents but to do it anyway. Maybe he realises he's gay at school and struggles through internalised homophobia, maybe he lives in denial for a long time, but he works through it. Does he have an illicit relationship with a boy at school, except he doesn't accept that for what it is? Does he have an actual boyfriend, but hides it from his parents? Does he come out at all?

Older Dudley maybe thinks he's wrestled with all of this and starts a relationship with another man, only to realise he still has work to do. Maybe he still hasn't come out to his parents, maybe he still has issues with other gay people, or his own self-acceptance. Maybe the man he starts to fall for is actually connected to the wizarding world in some way - a muggleborn wizard? A squib, who can sympathise with Dudley's feeling of not connecting with his family any more? A wizard who is some sort of muggle liaison? And then Dudley and Harry reconnect on better terms as adults. I'd love to see Dudley actually in the magical world and trying to navigate it and work through some of his old misconceptions.

Dudley and his partner/husband have a kid - maybe his husband already has a young child, or they adopt, or something, but either way: surprise! The kid is magical! And suddenly Dudley has to figure out how to support a magical child, and if his husband is also a muggle he's suddenly the one who 'knows' about the wizarding world and has to assure him that it's fine. I love the idea that, during Deathly Hallows, Dudley started trying to show some more interest in the magical world while in hiding, and the wizards protecting them were happy to try and teach him. He reconnects with Harry, comes to learn and appreciate more about magic, and their kid gets off to a great start at Hogwarts. As above, I'd love to see Dudley actually in the magical world and trying to navigate it and work through some of his old misconceptions, and being the sort of parent both he and Harry should have had.