Bonus Round 1
Sep. 20th, 2013 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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srs2013Bonus Round 0 is now closed, and Bonus Round 1 is now open! Let's get creating, shall we?
This round, the theme is book-based AUs.
If you have an idea for something you'd like to see, please leave a book title, the characters involved, and any other details as a PROMPT below. Then read through everyone else's prompts, and leave a FILL for any which catch your eye. Fills can be in any media, and they need not be long, but please put a little effort in--if anyone starts spamming this post for points, we'll be able to tell.
You should place PROMPT/FILL, your current team affiliation and a brief summary in the comment title. NSFW prompts and fills should mention this in the summary or at the top of the post.
You will be awarded five points per prompt for the first five prompts you leave. The first three fills posted for each prompt will receive 15 points, the next three 10 points, and the next three 5 points. Prompts with ten or more fills will no longer receive fill points.
Bonus rounds are still rarepair only, but you can post prompts or fills for any rare ship this round, including gen/platonic ones (which should be indicated with an & as above). However, you may not fill your own prompt. We also encourage people not to fill prompts from their teammates, although the points will not be deducted if you do.
Bonus round fills can include links provided they are publicly viewable. Works can also be cross-posted to other websites, as there is no anonymity requirement in bonus rounds. However, works posted directly to comments will be limited to 16,000 characters by the Dreamwidth comment limit. Longer works should therefore be divided between multiple comments.
Remember, Team Chuck can participate in bonus rounds, and if you change teams, points earned will transfer with you until the end of the team shuffle period.
This round will close on October 6.
This round, the theme is book-based AUs.
If you have an idea for something you'd like to see, please leave a book title, the characters involved, and any other details as a PROMPT below. Then read through everyone else's prompts, and leave a FILL for any which catch your eye. Fills can be in any media, and they need not be long, but please put a little effort in--if anyone starts spamming this post for points, we'll be able to tell.
You should place PROMPT/FILL, your current team affiliation and a brief summary in the comment title. NSFW prompts and fills should mention this in the summary or at the top of the post.
You will be awarded five points per prompt for the first five prompts you leave. The first three fills posted for each prompt will receive 15 points, the next three 10 points, and the next three 5 points. Prompts with ten or more fills will no longer receive fill points.
Bonus rounds are still rarepair only, but you can post prompts or fills for any rare ship this round, including gen/platonic ones (which should be indicated with an & as above). However, you may not fill your own prompt. We also encourage people not to fill prompts from their teammates, although the points will not be deducted if you do.
Bonus round fills can include links provided they are publicly viewable. Works can also be cross-posted to other websites, as there is no anonymity requirement in bonus rounds. However, works posted directly to comments will be limited to 16,000 characters by the Dreamwidth comment limit. Longer works should therefore be divided between multiple comments.
Remember, Team Chuck can participate in bonus rounds, and if you change teams, points earned will transfer with you until the end of the team shuffle period.
This round will close on October 6.
Fill, (team Crowley/Sam), Hunger Games AU
Date: 2013-09-24 07:51 am (UTC)Benny scores well during training, beating out several careers for favored to win. His district’s only living Hunger Games victor is a grizzled old man named Bobby. Bobby assures him he stands a good chance. Benny can only stare at his district’s other tribute, a 12 year old named Clare. She reminds him of his sister. They both know she won’t make it. They don’t talk about it.
The first day of the Hunger Games dawns cold, and as the tributes are raised on platforms into the arena, they see why. There is nothing but blinding white snow for miles. The Cornucopia stands nearby like forbidden fruit, promising great riches at a great cost. As soon as the gong releases them, Benny sprints in the opposite direction. He knows the Cornucopia will be a bloodbath, and he wants no part of that yet.
His first goal is to find shelter. He knew in the northern districts they had a way of making shelter out of packed snow, but Benny doesn’t know the technique and he’s better not many of the other tributes do either. With temperatures already well below freezing in full sun, shelter will be the difference between life and death before the day is done. The snow slows him down but he pushes out, grateful that no one seems to be following him.
He finds a cave that will be suitable for shelter just before nightfall. The anthem that precedes the death recap plays on the air, muffled by snow. Benny could go out and see which tributes didn’t survive the day, but he can’t bear it. He might see Clare’s face among them, and then he would have to live with the knowledge that by abandoning her from the get-go effectively signed her death warrant.
Benny stacks the cave’s entrance with lose rocks. It won’t keep anyone out, but it will alert him to anyone trying to get in. He sleeps uneasily, curled in a ball in the smallest part of the cave, trying to conserve as much of his body heat as possible. He’s hungry, but he has the distinct impression that he would just throw up anything he put in his stomach right now anyway. Nothing like anger, guilt, and fear to kill an appetite. Or a bunch of innocent kids, apparently.
Benny was awoken mere hours later by the sound of sliding rocks. Instantly he’s on the alert, and painfully aware that he has no weapon to speak of. He holds his fists in front of himself uselessly anyway. The boy who clears the lip of the cave is not what Benny was expecting. He’s lithe, which Benny can see even with the lined coat the boy is wearing, but with a sharpness to him that suggests he could kill if he needed. Benny remembers seeing him a few times in passing during training, but careers and tributes from the poorer districts did not tend to mingle. The two of them stare at each other in the reflected moonlight without saying a word or moving a muscle for several minutes.
“Where’d you get the coat?” Benny asks.
The guy looks at Benny like he’s stupid. “The Cornucopia.”
“Did you kill anyone to get it?”
He hesitates, like he’s contemplating lying. “Didn’t have to. Someone else did, and I just pulled it from the kid’s dead fingers.”
“Pretty lucky.”
“I’m a lucky guy.”
“I’m Benny.”
“Dean. You’re the kid from the farm district, right? Lots of people think you stand a good chance at winning.”
Benny shrugs.
“They’re wrong, though.”
“That so?”
“You’re not a killer. I’ve known killers my whole life and you aren’t one of them.”
“Are you one of them?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to kill you, though.”
“I don’t want to kill you either.”
“Truce, then? I share my coat with you and you share this cave with me?”
“Truce. Me casa es su casa.”
“Good.”
Benny sets the rocks back up at the entrance before heading back to his sleeping spot. Dean is already there, curled up with the coat draped over his shoulders like a short blanket. Benny lies down so they are back to back, pressed close for warmth, and the coat is just big enough to cover the both of them. A parachute marking a present from a sponsor makes its presence known right outside the cave. Inside is a flashlight. The message from Bobby seems clear, make a friend, get a gift. Benny silently thanks him.
The deaths start stacking up quickly after the second day. The temperature drops further and Benny figures that anyone who hasn’t found shelter has died of exposure by now. Dean and Benny are living off melted snow. Dean never complains about being hungry once, and for that, Benny is grateful, but the fact remains that every day they go without food is another day they grow weaker. They venture out on the fourth day, determined to find food. Instead they end up cornering a dark haired boy from district one.
“I have food,” he says when they ambush him and relieve him of his weapon, a long silver knife. “I have food, but you won’t find it without me. You want it; you have to team up with me.”
Dean and Benny look at each other. They’ve gotten very good at communicating without words over the past few days. “Alright, but there’s two of us and one of you, and we’re bigger. Any funny business and we’ll eat you instead, capisce?” Dean asks him.
“Yeah, I capisce,” he says, rolling his eyes. “My name’s Castiel.”
“I’m Dean, this is Benny,” Dean replies gruffly, “the food now, if you don’t mind. We’re a bit peckish.”
Castiel leads them to an outcrop in the snow. He has a bag of dried meat, which Dean tears into the second he has it in his hands, and several boxes of salt crackers. Benny eats an entire sleeve of the crackers in the time it takes them to walk back to their cave, saving the rest for later. He couldn’t imagine the games would go on for too much longer, with the elements getting harder to survive and supplies running lower every day, but he wanted to be ready to outlast anything.
Dean and Benny sit shoulder to shoulder out of habit, Dean’s coat draped across both of them. Castiel raises an eyebrow at that but doesn’t say anything. Dean pulls one more piece of jerky out of the bag and wraps up the rest for later. He takes a bite and hands it to Benny, who takes a bite as well and hands it back. They continue this until the piece is gone, Castiel watching the entire exchange with a strange light in his eyes.
“Have you guys gotten anything from your sponsors?” Castiel asks.
Benny retrieves the small flashlight from a pocket and holds it up. “Just this.”
Castiel nods. “I got the food on the first day but nothing since. I keep trying to figure out what they want but so far no luck.”
The hairs on the back of Benny’s neck stand on end at the reminder that they are being constantly watched. He’d almost forgotten.
“Anyway,” Castiel continues, “I bet you two will start getting loads of gifts once your sponsors see how well you guys work together.”
Benny realizes the meaning behind his words. Sponsors only care about a good show, and the only thing that made a better show than murder was romance. Benny hadn’t thought of Dean that way before, but as they were now, touching at every point from shoulder to toe, sharing food like lovers, it made sense. Playing this up for the cameras might be their only shot at survival.
That night, instead of lying back to back, Benny turns over so he can wrap an arm around Dean and pull him against his chest. Dean simply presses himself back more firmly against Benny as if in unspoken acceptance of this new arrangement. In the morning there are two parachutes waiting for them, one with a thick blanket large enough for two, and the other with a bowl of hot soup. Apparently, their sponsors approve.