Rare Male Slash Exchange 2023

[a_whale_bone]

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 thrilled to get anything in this letter, regardless of whether I've written a long or short section on it.

I am just called whalebone on AO3 :)


Do Not Wants

General Likes

Smut Likes

Request One: His Dark Materials
Balthamos/Baruch

Request Two: Lost
Daniel Faraday/Desmond Hume | Daniel Faraday/Miles Straume | Desmond Hume/Sayid Jarrah

Request Three: Benjamin January Mysteries
Benjamin January/Hannibal Sefton

Request Four: Original Work
Human Pining for Robot Best Friend/Robot Pining Too | Mage Healer/Broken Android Healing Doesn’t Work On | Android/His Human Soulmate | Angel/Man He’s Sent to Protect


DNWs

• Non-con
• Mpreg
• BDSM
• Incest
• Watersports & scat
• Underage
• Teenager (under-18)/adult romance and sex
• A/B/O
• Unrequested non-canon ships
• Medical kink (meaning: explicitly kinking on medical treatment, doctor/patient relationship, use of medical equipment. Feelings and attraction developing during hurt/comfort, wound care, etc., are fine.)
• 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 inhuman/human relationships
• Slow-burn
• Navigating inhuman/human sex
• Trauma recovery
• Tenderness and gentle touching (hair stroking, hand holding, face touches, all that stuff.)
• Banter and snark
• Non-mundane AUs (setting change or canon divergence)
• Time travel
• 5 times fic / 5+1 fic

Smut likes

• Character-driven smut
• Tenderness
• Hand/finger kink
• Wireplay (for robot and android ships)
• Interesting ways for non-humans 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: His Dark Materials

Fandom likes:

• Alternate worlds
• Love-as-redemption and the importance of loving people (Lyra loving and accepting Graceful Wings is a big part of what saves everyone)
• Canon-typical weirdness (mulefa? Super weird. Love them.)
• Focus on personal growth and learning and kindness
• Ruminations on faith and death/li>
• Family of choice
• Daemons, of course

Totally Optional Prompts

• I love the hints we're given about Baruch and Balthamos' 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 Two: Lost

Fandom likes:

• Canon-typical weirdness, especially 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.

Totally Optional Prompts:
Daniel/Desmond

•  "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant". This was not explored anywhere near enough in canon! Please give me something where Desmond has to be Daniel's constant. The Constant is such a romantic episode of the show, so I'd love to see some H/C time shenanigans romance with Daniel and Desmond.

• Sideways!Daniel Widmore isn't woken up by Desmond like the OG Losties, but they do have that great conversation in "Happily Ever After" in S6 where they talk about love at first sight, and feeling like you know someone. In canon they're talking about Penny and Charlotte, of course, but what if Daniel felt that pull towards Desmond instead? What if it's reciprocated?

• In some of his wild time travel shenanigans, Desmond tries to save Daniel from his mother.

Daniel/Miles

•  These two are such a contrast to one another! Snarky, defensive Miles who just wants to make a buck (but secretly has a soft side) and quiet, anxious genius Daniel would be such an odd couple. I'd love to see them bonding over something unexpected and having an "oh no, he's hot" moment (that leads to more?)

• Adapting to life in the Dharma Initiative before Daniel leaves on the submarine and growing together with the weird new domesticity of the barracks. Or maybe getting into trouble on the island and having to work together?

• Sideways!Miles and sideways!Daniel as secret boyfriends, or they meet and hit it off at Daniel's weird concert at the end of the show.

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.

Request Three: Benjamin January Mysteries

Note: I have not read past book 7 yet. I am not averse to spoilers, but would love something set pre-canon, in early canon, or vaguely set where later canon knowledge isn't essential. I am aware of Hannibal's canonical backstory.


Fandom likes:

• Such a vivid sense of place
• Music - both Ben and Hannibal being talented musicians is catnip to me
• Navigating the complex social strictures
• Ben's relationship with his very different sisters
• The way Ben and Hannibal look out for one another and rely on one another
• Both Ben and Hannibal are total woobies but in very different ways - Ben is a true iron woobie, stoic until he can't be stoic any more, while Hannibal is often frail, ill and struggling, but trying to put a good face on it. There's so much space for hurt/comfort for these two.
• Anytime Ben and Hannibal quote Shakespeare or poetry at one another I am delighted.
• Ben's fascinating mix of kindness, deep anger, complicated spirituality, and how he carries such trauma and grief but is still so pragmatic about facing any problems and still finds such love and enjoyment in life. Hannibal suffers so much from his addiction and illness, but he's got this lightness and gentleness about him.

Canon Relationship Note:

I love Rose, so I would prefer she and Ben not break up (or Rose die) if the fic is set when they've got together. Either set the fic before Ben and Rose are together, or maybe they have an open relationship and she's fine with Ben/Hannibal, or maybe sometimes Ben/Rose/Hannibal is a thing. Or just don't mention Rose at all! 

Totally Optional Prompts

• Their first time going from friendship to something more, in the late night/early morning haze after playing at a ball all night. I'd love something that focuses on their mutual love of music and appreciation for one another's talents.

• Hurt/comfort - Hannibal is very ill (again)? Or Ben is injured (again)? Or both! Lots of tender caretaking, maybe some bedsharing that starts platonic and turns into something else.

• I would love a setting change AU or fusion for these two. In Spaaaace? A His Dark Materials AU? Pirates? Vampire hunters? 

Request Four: Original Work

I find writing specific prompts for OW really tricky - forgive me. But trust that I would love a fic for any of these tags just as much as for any of the other fandoms. They are pretty much tailor-made for my specific interests.

Some things I really like in OW:

• For ships involving non-human characters, I love stories that focus on the difference of their experiences - of attraction, of sex, of the world in general. I love robots that process things like machines, and angels that seem otherworldly and strange. Bonus points if they don't want to be like humans.
• Settings I particularly like: in space!, near-future sci-fi, steampunk, solarpunk, urban fantasy, alternate history
• I love first times and get-togethers, especially when pining is involved
• Characters exploring, appreciating and admiring one another's differences, and discovering unexpected things in common
• Roadtrips
• Touch-starved characters being touched for the first time in a while
• Someone had a bad relationship previously and is learning to trust the new one
• Looking after an environment or rebuilding something (refurbishing an old house, fixing a broken spaceship, building a garden)

Human Pining for Robot Best Friend/Robot Pining Too - I adore friends-to-lovers, especially if it's a longstanding friendship with a complicated history, and I love pining. Both pining for years? Great. One has been pining for years and the other has only just caught feelings? Amazing. They both just realised they had feelings for one another and are secretly sad? Yes please. Yearning looks, not-quite-accidental touches, noticing lots of little things about one another... all of that good stuff. Are robot/human relationships taboo or normal in this world? Are robots "meant" to experience romantic feelings?

Mage Healer/Broken Android Healing Doesn’t Work On - ah, the angst! Does the mage figure out how to fix the android? Does he have to learn that he can't fix everything and that's okay, he loves the android anyway? Do they know each other before the android is broken? Are robots known in this world with mages, or are mages known in this world with robots? If you want to worldbuild that, amazing, but I am also happy to accept both magic and sci-fi tech at once.

Android/His Human Soulmate - soulmate stuff doesn't usually appeal to me because of the pre-destination element, but add in an android and suddenly I am into it. Are soulmates known in this world? Does everyone have one? Is the human happy to find his android soulmate, or does he have complicated feelings about his soulmate not being a 'real' person? There's so much in there about personhood and what makes someone a person, if they have a soul.

Angel/Man He’s Sent to Protect - I love angels to be a little bit strange and alien, but fascinated by people, especially by people who don't really think of themselves as that special. The combination of an ordinary man who is seen as extraordinary by this amazing being, and said amazing being learning how to be vulnerable and open to the newness of this... yeah, that's good. Divinity and faith and love and passion all co-existing.