221: Wish I Could Be Part of Your World

[thefourthvine]

We recently watched Operation Petticoat, as you do. (Look, sometimes a person needs to see Cary Grant being suave. I am quite sure this has happened to you.) And I finished it feeling that you people had let me down, because while I am sure this has been thoroughly documented within the White Collar fandom, no one told me.

And what no one told me is that White Collar is an Operation Petticoat AU.

It's so obvious! Tony Curtis is the guy who joined the Navy for the shiny uniform and turned everything to his advantage, and then smooth-talked his way into being the supply officer for the submarine, and then robbed an entire Navy base blind to get the stuff he needed. Cary Grant is the captain, using Tony Curtis's skills because he needs them, but always aware this is a double-edged sword with no handle. Come on; that is obviously Neal and Peter, right there. And if you needed any proof beyond that, there's the name of the Tony Curtis character, which is: Nick Holden. As in, you know, one letter different from Neal Caffrey's favorite alias.

(If you're curious, by the way, Mozzie is clearly Ramon, thief and conman extraordinaire. Elizabeth, we decided after a lot of discussion, is the best parts of Lt. Crandall and Lt. Duran, combined; this is clearly why the OT3 vibe is so strong in White Collar. But there is no Satchmo equivalent. I guess you can't have everything.)

Anyway. If anyone has been yearning for a WWII White Collar AU that's heavy on the humor and features a pink submarine, there's one available for rental. I just thought you should know, in case your friends were keeping you in the dark, too.

And if you already knew, here are some other AUs for you to consider.

The One in Which We Learn That in the Right Hands, the Sketchbook Is Scarier than the Sword. Never Leave a Trace, by sam_storyteller. White Collar, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey.

You know what's weird about White Collar? I remember the stories, but most of the time I can't remember if a given story was gen or OT3. (If it was something else, I remember.) I assume this is because White Collar itself is so OT3 that gen is just OT3 without actual sex scenes. (Dear White Collar people: Just have the canon sex scene already. The Burkes have a big enough bed, and it would save us all a lot of confusion and double-checking. We all know the fucking is happening, you realize. It wouldn't come as a surprise. <3, TFV) So take my pairing notes with a grain of salt, is what I'm saying. I double-checked, and I double-checked again, and I am pretty sure I'm right. But with White Collar, you can never be sure.

And now let's talk about this AU. It's not, like, the Neal, Peter, and Elizabeth gladiator AU. (Um. Please tell me there is not actually a White Collar gladiator AU. I think I sprained something just imagining that.) Instead, it's the show, except with magic. And this is not shiny happy magic with clear rules, where every first-level spellcaster gets one magic missile spell per day and his party only keeps him alive because at level 15 he will get lots of magic missiles. (And also because the player will whine if you let this character get killed off like the last one.) This magic is - fuzzy. Murky. Edgy. This is magic I can - okay, not believe in. But this is magic that works for me. (Hey, there's a reason I never played a magic user, okay? And not just because magic missile doesn't do all that much for me. I just have a hard time having fun with magic that's structured like an Amway sales chart.)

I love how this story manages to be so much like the actual show in the basics - I mean, everyone still has the same jobs and no one is wearing a toga - while being completely different in tone and genre. I love how much sense the magic makes, how it totally works to have prison, a place where people suffer and are often powerless, be a nexus of supernatural power. And I love how even though the entire picture is different, Neal and Peter and Elizabeth are still absolutely themselves.

This story is gorgeous and involving and lovely and great. And that's all I can say. Go read it right now.

The One That Starts and Ends in Pretty Much Exactly the Same Place, and Covers the Entire Galaxy in Between. It Is the Infinity Symbol of Fan Fiction Stories, Basically. Only Good for Legends, by leupagus. Star Trek XI, Jim Kirk/Spock.

Star Trek is officially the canon that ate my life. It should come with a warning, actually:

WARNING: Susceptible individuals may find themselves dramatically altered from continued exposure to this material. Changes may include, but are not limited to, a tendency to write "Spock" in hearts on your shoes, laughing at stories rated NCC-1701, and partial or total loss of your leisure time. You will never recover, and there is no way to know if you are susceptible until it is too late. Please check your schedule for the next four decades before opening this DVD.

I mean, that totally happened to me. So it is extremely cheering to me to happen upon a story like this and know, for sure, that I am not the only person who lost her soul and her evenings to Star Trek. (Okay, yes, I already know I'm not alone. frostfire fell down the well with me. But more company is always nice. It's a very big well.)

And then I get to read the story. Which is, well - it is a giant sprawling epic in which Spock is a cop and Jim is, you know, Jim. (I'm pretty sure in Iowa they use "Jim Kirk" as a descriptive phrase. As in, "Did you hear about Roger? Pulled a Jim Kirk with a Klingon; hear he won't be walking for months." Or "The barn's missing and there's giant letters spelling out a graphic insult where the floorboards used to be; gosh, this looks Jim Kirk-y.") And then stuff happens. I mean, a lot of stuff, because did I mention the sprawlingness of this story? Trust me, it's worth mentioning twice. This story goes from earth to Vulcan and back again.

I love lots of things about this, but probably what I love most is the mystery plot line. Mostly that's because SF mystery is something that's hard to do and, in my opinion, totally worth doing (All the time! Everywhere!), but I admit that there's also the fact that the mystery plot line has got a lot of Vulcans in it. I love Vulcans, especially when they aren't being a frankly creepy faceless monolith, and they are the furthest thing from that here.

Plus, T'Pring is wonderful in this. In fact, my notes on this story read, in large part: "Come for the Kirk/Spock, stay for the T'Pring of awesome." (If you're wondering why I don't share my bookmarks on Pinboard too often, this would be why. I rec slowly because no one anywhere should be subjected to my immediate reactions to stories. Also, said reactions are often at least partly expressed in long strings of vowels. I try to edit that out of the final recs, too.)

The One in Which We Learn What Happens When You Hire a Wizard as an Interior Designer. The other things the road to hell is paved with, by luciazephyr. The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden/Susan Rodriguez, Harry Dresden/John Marcone.

The Dresden Files is turning out to be one of those fandoms where I find myself inexplicably sulking at the internet, wondering why there isn't more fan fiction for it out there, even though I have not taken the time to get to grips with the actual canon. But Dresden/Marcone apparently speaks directly to the part of my brain that was shaped by intensive exposure to Smallville fan fiction.

No, seriously, if you've ever wondered to yourself what the world would look like if Clark Kent had magical powers instead of, you know, super powers (primary difference: none noted) and Lex Luthor was a businesslike criminal instead of a criminal businessman, Dresden Files fan fiction is where you should be turning. And if you have no idea at all what the Dresden Files is about, not to worry, because this story will teach you everything you need to know. (And if you don't want to dive in there until you know, here you go: There's magic and crime. Dresden has magic. Marcone has crime. There are some complications. And then they have sex the end. Okay, technically that's what the fan fiction is about, but I think it's already established that in this case the fan fiction is my canon.)

This story is perfect for me, because I am - well, pragmatic might be a good way to put it. In Smallville, I rapidly grew tired of Clark's Lone Hero pose; I always wanted Lex and Clark to team up, because Lex got shit done. And Clark, honestly, needed someone to get his shit together. And then Lex could borrow (and slightly modify) Clark's moral compass, and together they could save the world. Seriously, people have no right having these prolonged declared mortal enemies/rivals things going on when by working together they could be so much more effective. Basically my message to them is always: With great power comes a great need to get your head out of your ass. (It's probably a good thing I'm not on any comic book writing team.)

Well, that is what does happen in this story with Dresden and Marcone, provided you are willing to consider Chicago to be roughly the same thing as the entire world. (It isn't. However, it definitely has the strangest pizza in the world, and that is almost the same thing.) Dresden even manages to get his head out of his ass. I cannot tell you how immensely satisfying I found this.

(I cannot help but notice that I'm a lot more concerned about Dresden's issues than Marcone, and I'm concerned that you might be envisioning me as a sort of chaotic neutral type person now. I'm not. I used to play paladins. Really, I did. I still like them! I find the concept of lawful goodness truly interesting! I give to charities and am kind to puppies and hardly ever break any important laws! Just, in fiction, I tend to prefer people who are effective but immoral to people who are the kind of moral where they screw things up all the time but for the best possible reasons.)

Anyway, this story is long and glorious and features the unstoppable team of Dresden (in charge of magic) and Marcone (in charge of everything else). Which is as it should be. The end.

The One That Left Me Twitching with a Need for the Recipes, Damn It, the RECIPES. Grande Soy Triple Dirty Chai, by friskaz. Suits, Mike Ross/Harvey Specter.

You can blame frostfire for this one. She's the person who emailed me while she was in a distant country with a summary of this fandom, which meant when I started seeing fan fiction for it I responded with "Oh, right, that's the one with Harvey and Mike! The lawyers!" instead of "So, what, we're big into Brioni/Armani now? How does that go? 'Oh, baby, slide your button into my notched lapel - harder, harder, YES.'"

(If you don't know the canon, although it's hard for me to believe I could be speaking from a place of greater knowledge than anyone when it comes to a currently airing show - it's about, well, Harvey and Mike. Harvey is a lawyer with an awesome boss. Mike doesn't actually have a law degree but is practicing law anyway. Note for people following along at home: In the real world, it is better not to do this.)

So. I think we can all agree that the barista AU is a fine and honorable tradition in fandom. (Although - when did this start, exactly? Is there a Highlander barista AU, in which Methos is the guy who knows everything about the history of coffee but will happily drink the stuff from a vending machine and Duncan is the guy who takes coffee way too seriously and works endlessly to bring good coffee to everyone? Is there a Starsky and Hutch barista AU where they hug a lot and fight corporate coffee? Is there a TOS barista AU in which Kirk is the - you know what, no. I can work a Reboot barista AU fine, but trying to imagine James Tiberius Kirk mark 1 as a barista is hurting my head, even given the worrisome similarity between Starfleet and Starbucks.)

Anyway. My point is: I can generally take or leave a barista AU, except when they are awesome. This one is awesome. I buy Mike as a barista (yes, based on my extensive experience with this canon, which involved reading not one but two intercontinental emails, I feel wholly comfortable making this assertion), I love the way Mike and Harvey interact, I love the (I assume) original characters, and this is just a totally satisfying, sweet, lovable story, from beginning to end.

Much like a really good pie. Which, note, if you read this story, you're going to want some pie. (Or other dessert of your choice, pie-haters; I know you're out there. I'm married to one.) I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Just, some stories should come with a kitchen warning up front ("Warning: Do not read if you don't have ready access to a kitchen or at least the excellent products thereof"), and that's what I'm giving you here.

Comments

[foursweatervests]

Okay, now I can't stop imagining TOS Kirk as the barista-turned-manager who wants to go "where no barista has gone before"(™ME) and keeps making the WORST concotions out there and his fleet of baristas work their asses off to keep him out of trouble. Mainly they sic Spock on him, one of the co-owners who is there all the time since Kirk is a little...over the top, shall we say. But in an enthusiastic way.

Uhura's the face of the business and the other co-owner. It was her idea to hire Kirk, because even if he's insane, he's got great managing skills and even better connections to the coffee world - and she knew Spock could handle him. That way, she didn't have to.

And Scotty's the guy they rent the coffee machines from who somehow also got hired on as the one who hangs around and fixes all the machines and he and Chekov compete to see who can create the craziest-but-most-delicious (unlike Kirk's mixtures which are just crazy), and Sulu very smartly stays out of their way. Sulu's the one all the regulars know by name and ask for, because he makes a great cup of coffee and is a politics junkie, so a five-minute chat with him in the morning is better than reading the newspaper. A very liberal newspaper, but still. (Everyone at the shop is constantly in awe of him because every time he's been on register, his drawer has come out perfectly even. Every single time. For a while, Uhura suspected magic. Kirk just attributes it to his excellent management.)


Oh, man. Fair warning: I'm going to blame the heck out of you for the rest of my evening spent daydreaming. Eveningdreaming?

[thefourthvine]

I cannot for the life of me understand why you would blame someone for that kind of daydream. It's a thing to celebrate! I'm certainly happier for having read about it.

[foursweatervests]

Ok, fine. "Give you the credit" to your liking?

[melannen]

I think my problem with barista AUs is I don't want to go AU enough, because I started daydreaming about this too, except I decided it would be a branching-from-canon AU set before the first movie, and Admiral Kirk is so very bored by his desk job that he starts hanging around and donig most of his work in the Starfleet coffee bar in his headquarters building, and one of the poor yeomen who run it gets brave enough to tell him that if he's going to be down there all the time scaring the customers he should at least do some work, and he totally does.

And it turns out that nobody expects Admiral Kirk to be working the coffee bar (in a stained apron with his rank tabs off) so half the people don't realize it's him (okay, and he's also aged a little bit since the last time his face was all over the news) and he kind of likes it, and soon he's down there every shift messing with the machinery and flirting with all the officers and visiting dignitaries that come through (and only about half of them recognize him, and the ones who know don't give it away,) and mentoring the hell out of the people who are supposed to be doing the work. (Staff turnover gets ridiculous because half of them somehow end up deciding to try for command track after about a month there.) He almost feels young again and at least this way he gets to interact with people and not just reports. And his boss is sufficiently relieved that he's at least staying out of trouble that he lets him get away with it (also, on the one or two days a week he actually goes up to his office, the information he gets through coffee-shop gossip actually makes him the most effective administrator on the floor.)

And of course McCoy finds out and starts showing up whenever he's on break, to lounge around and mock him and whine, and bringing really good whiskey to leave behind the counter, and word gets around that if you come down when Jimmy's on shift and know the passwords he'll spike your drink for you.

And then there's the regular old Enterprise officers' get-together at Sulu and Chekov's place, and of course McCoy brings up the barista thing, and Kirk tries to shift the topic by talking about the jiggering he's been doing to the replicators' programming to get more flavor options, and Scotty gets all offended at the idea that they're serving replicated coffee ('Nae wonder ye all go barmy after a few months there! Even when we were five years out in the black we had better coffee than that!') and the next week he shows up with a jerry-rigged espresso machine that may or may include experimental classified technology. And drags a few of his acolytes with him.

Meanwhile, Uhura writes to Spock on Vulcan and over-casually mentions that the Admiral never quite seemed to settle in to working at Command, but he seems to be quite enjoying his second career as a barista. And Spock gets the letter and just sort of stares at it for about an hour, and a few weeks later he's poking his head into the coffee bar on Jim's shift and raising a single eloquent eyebrow.

(And then the actual plot starts. Possibly involving Carol Marcus hearing about the amazingly good coffee that's been appearing in that building and unexpectedly turning up?)

ETA: And Spock shows up on a very busy afternoon (okay, they're all busy now that they're using Scotty's espresso machine, and nobody wants to dive into the necessary explanations to Personnel that would be required to get another staff member), and when Kirk notices him he grins and says "Hey, Spock, come to help out?" and without even saying a word Spock ducks behind the counter and rolls up the sleeves of his Vulcan meditation robes and starts pouring coffee, and of course he is extremely competent at this, but disappears before anyone really gets a chance to talk to him.

The next day he turns up again, with a small self-powered device that makes a hot, herbal Vulcan drink that's popular among academics, and he and Scotty start figuring out how to integrate it into the espresso machine (because of course all the old Enterprise crew just happened to drop in that morning anyway.) And then he turns up again, and again, still not saying much, but day by day starting to show a little bit of the old humor and warmth around his eyes, especially when he and McCoy get into an ongoing war about who gets spiked coffee (McCoy thinks it should be both himself and Spock, even if he has to sneak the chocolate syrup into Spock's drink. Spock thinks it should be neither of them.) The thing is that even the people who didn't recognize Kirk when he was just Jimmy are hard-pressed to not notice anything when there's also a strangely familiar Vulcan working next to him, like they've been partners for years...


I think yours is fluffier though! Mine has grown this weird undertone of pathos.

[foursweatervests]

Yes, mine is fluffier, but yours is better. ::chinhands:: More, please?

[melannen]

Yours was much more in the spirit of a proper barista AU!

Mine, on the other hand, just goes wherever it wants to go.


Like, because of Spock's Vulcan drink, this particular coffee bar has started attracting a lot of the non-Human officers working at Command. And Uhura is working in one of the nearby buildings as part of a special project/training she's involved with, and therefore coming to the coffee bar and bringing some of her xenolinguistics colleagues with her, and they start a discussion about the universality of the watering-hole and sharing/providing liquid as a welcoming custom, and lure Spock into it, and then they start thinking about ways to provide other communal stimulant/drinks without having to fall back on the replicator, and Scotty gets drafted again, and before long there are half-a-dozen other non-coffee options (starting with a hot kola drink that Uhura likes, and moving farther afield from there.)

The upshot is that, eventually somebody way up in the Starfleet hierarchy with too much authority and too much self-importance finds out that Kirk is pretty much drawing an admiral's pay for working in the office coffee bar, and Kirk's direct boss says sorry but cuts him loose. But by that point it's the best place in Starfleet Command San Francisco to get everybody's favorite stimulant - including quite a few offworld diplomats, and of course still really good coffee - so there are quite a few Very Important People willing to stand up for Kirk & co.

Of course there are also quite a few Very Important People who got tired of Kirk's shenanigans a long time ago and are making noises about the dignity of rank and dereliction of duty, etc. etc.

...and then I seriously have no idea what happens next. They all quit Starfleet and start Enterprise Coffee two streets down and it turns into a standard barista AU? They start a campaign to make flag-officers do a certain number of hours of yeoman's work every month, and incidentally also increase drinks diversity in Starfleet? Kirk gets court-martialed and there is a Moment of Crowning Awesome where he speaks out for the importance of shared hot drinks to galactic unity, and he accidentally makes peace with the Klingons in the process? The Marcuses and/or Saavik turn up after all, and I end up retelling the plot of The Wrath of Khan only with more coffee and less dead Spock (in this version he only gets scalded with boiling water rather than dying of radiation poisoning)?

Also it probably ought to be a fluffy Kirk/Spock romance but I kind of fail epically at keeping that sort of thing under control, as you can probably tell. <_<

[foursweatervests]

Yours was much more in the spirit of a proper barista AU! At the risk of offending people: long on cute, short on plot? I like a barista!AU now and again, but overall, I'd have to say I prefer your style of writing. It's just fun. Can I vote for the campaign + a court-martialing? I think we can safely say it hasn't been done before!

[melannen]

We all admire the thing we can't do! Also, I wouldn't exactly describe mine as having 'plot' either.

And I think the court-martial, triumph-of-coffee ending would have to be written by somebody who actually, *cough*, likes coffee. :P

[foursweatervests]

::gasp!:: You don't like coffee?? I'm...I'm not sure I can do this. ;__; It's--it's just too painful. ::sob::

Heh. Would you call it intrigue, then? You at least had an obstacle! I think mine would turn into a rambling on the epic love of Uhura and Sulu.

[melannen]

>> a rambling on the epic love of Uhura and Sulu.

I APPROVE OF THIS CONCEPT.

[foursweatervests]

SO MANY IDEAS. It's not even funny.

[ellen_fremedon]

I WOULD TOTALLY READ THIS. Or, I just did read this, but I would read MORE.

[sophia_sol]

♥_♥

A+ barista not-actually-AU -- it works so ASTONISHINGLY WELL. And I kind of love the underlying pathos.

[thefourthvine]

I LOVE YOU AND YEARN FOR MORE. Oh my god MORE PLEASE. This is amaaaaazing.

*fixes you with Doe Eyes of Yearning*

[melannen]

Sorry, that is all there is!

Also I can't perceive of a happy ending for any of the core Enterprise crew, no matter how AU you go, that doesn't have Enterprise herself in it, and I can't figure out how to work that in to this AU without either getting very silly or betraying the barista side.

(this is the same problem I have with Atlantis AUs. John cannot be happy without his city! all my true 'ships have ships in them, we knew this already.)

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Well, of course the Enterprise would be involved- I mean, this is really the only way Kirk is ever going to learn to be any good at diplomacy, right? Being a barista is all *about* diplomacy. A couple years in the coffee bar dealing with bean divas and he can settle an Andorian treaty like *that*.

So maybe Starfleet gives him his ship back (after demoting him to Captain again, because drawing an Admirals pay while being a barista is not something they generally want to encourage despite how well it's worked out so far) and the crew flits about the galaxy bringing peace and caffeine to the stars?

[melannen]

Yeah, but... if he just gets his ship back (okay, slightly better at dealing with people) it's like the coffee bar interlude didn't really matter and he hasn't grown any. In the movies it worked, because what he had learned was that he hated being an admiral and nothing, nothing mattered but his ship, but the whole point of a barista AU (and tradesman AUs in general) is that the barista job is important, too, and having him go back to captaining devalues that. But having him captain and barista on the side would just make a mockery of both of them. I suppose he could quit Starfleet and be a barista on the Enterprise and do his diplomacy from there, but that would be totally unfair on whatever poor Captain he was undermining all the time, even if it was Sulu or someone.

...No, wait, I have it! So we go with the court-martial-and-change-Starfleet ending, and what happens is that in the process he has pissed off too many people to come out of the court martial intact (or even get his Captaincy back), and even his friends point out that he doesn't really want to be an Admiral, but he can't be a Captain forever, so he ends up with an honorable discharge and concessions from the Admiralty re: turning Starships into places that are welcoming, that let the Federation share who they actually are with the people they visit, not to mention improving matters for the crews and officers, creating a space for real cultural sharing.

So instead, Spock (who was officially on leave during the whole debacle and therefore can't be touched) is talked into accepting captaincy of the refitted Enterprise! Kirk can't actually undermine him, after all. Especially since Kirk gets to come along with him, one of the first people brought in under the new "spousal accompaniment" regulations as the Captain's husband. And Kirk becomes the first bartender/barista on the first ever Ten-Forward on a Starfleet ship!

:D Kirk/Spock solves everything.

And that really is the ending, the end.

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

Kirk as the prototype Guinan and the person who's responsible for all those children under Picard's feet all the time: I love it!

Actually I always thought the point of a barista AU was to point out that the true meaning of life has nothing to do with having squillions and squillions of dollars (or insert your local currency here), and that true happiness can be found anywhere you have friends and caffeine in the same place. But this AU of yours handily does both! Awesome.