srs2013 | Bonus Round 2

Bonus Round 1 is now closed, and Bonus Round 2 is now open!

This round, the theme is holidays/special occasions.

If you have an idea for something you'd like to see, please leave the ship, a holiday/special occasion, and any other details as a PROMPT below. After you've posted, 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. Do not forget to change the title of the comment when posting a FILL as a reply to a PROMPT. NSFW prompts and fills should mention this in the summary or at the top of the post. Reminder that team names must be in alphabetical order (ie. Balthazar/Death, not Death/Balthazar) and that portmanteaus (ie. Lubriel, Annaby) are not allowed when identifying team affiliation.

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). Due to some unforeseen complication from last round, we have changed the rules. It is now 15 points per fill for the first three fills by three different people. So if someone does a fic for Fill 1 and a fanmix for Fill 2, then get 15 + 10 points, and then Person 2 does a fill and Person 3 does a fill, so even though those would be fills 3 and 4, they count as 15 and 15 points since they're fills by new people. You are still not permitted to 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 is now closed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Depressing companion piece to the above. Nick visits the graveyard on the anniversary of his wife and son's death. It can be a recent one (1 month) or a big one (year) but emphasize of his heartbreak over his son's death, and crying at the gravestones.

It seems fitting that the leaves are all dead, crunching underneath his shoes as he crosses the field. The world seems cold and lifeless, as if it were mourning with him, but Nick knows all too well that isn’t true. The bills are piling up on the desk at home, and his boss has called him four times in the past week. Strange how the world just keeps moving. It has only been a month. One month-- thirty days and thirty nights of grieving and crying and blaming himself because why did he choose that night to work late? Why wasn’t he there to protect them or, at the very least, to die alongside them?

The world is a cruel, unjust place.

They lay side by side in the earth now, far beyond his reach. Their names are inscribed in stone, each with a simple epithet. Devoted Wife and Mother. Beloved Son. Neither one does them justice. Nick could fill a book and not do them justice. Taken too soon.

He lays the flowers on each headstone with care. Sarah’s roses are pink. Lucas’ are white. They’re the only bright spots in the otherwise dead field. That’s fitting too. They were the only bright spots in his life.

There’s darkness now. There’s so much darkness.

Nick thought that after a solid month, he’d be out of tears, but he isn’t. He twists his fingers up in his pockets, shivering against the cold, and gives a ragged breath as his eyes start to burn.

“I love you,” he says, voice dry and cracked with the effort not to cry. “I miss you.” He swallows hard, feeling his bottom lip begin to tremble. There was so much more he needed to say to them. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, choking on each syllable. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I couldn’t… I should have… I wish… Oh, God.”

Nick falls to his knees, fingers curling into the dirt as if he can still touch them that way. If God hears him, he gives no indication.

He sobs miserably. “What do I do? What am I supposed to do without you? I can’t. I just can’t. I’m by myself, and it’s all a mess, and I just… I just… I miss you.”

The grief crushes him like a weight, and Nick’s body folds under the pressure. He sinks down on the ground, wrapping his arms around himself in a crude mimicry of an embrace, but there is no one to hold him now.

Hours pass. Salt and wind mix on his cheeks until they’re red and chapped, but he hardly feels that. His skin goes numb, but his heart does not. There’s no cold that can dull such a profound agony as this, or so he thinks now. Nick walks home in the icy rain, no regard for his own health. Maybe this will be it. Maybe this will be what finally lets him follow them.

It isn’t.

He goes through half a bottle of scotch before he collapses into bed. Nick wraps himself up in blankets, but that doesn’t stop the chill. It isn’t the wind or the rain or the unforgiving winter air. Emptiness. It’s just the aching, icy emptiness. Time passes, but Nick knows he will never be whole again. What could possibly hope to fill this gap?

Nearly an hour goes by before the liquor has enough of a hold on him that his eyes roll closed and there’s a brief reprieve silence in his head. He’ll see them again tonight in his dreams. If he’s lucky, they’ll be smiling instead of bleeding and screaming and crying for help.

Nick is rarely lucky.

He sleeps then, a strangely familiar chill washing over him, and as he dreams, he hears his wife’s voice calling his name.

If only he could never wake up.

Bonus Round 2

Prompt (team Castiel/Lucifer), Nick, anniversary of family's death.

Fill: Team Castiel/Lucifer, Thirty Days and Thirty Nights